Hello everyone!
Today I am reviewing A Notable Omission by Isabella Muir.
Book Description:
A 1970s debate on equality is overshadowed by a deadly secret…
Spring 1970. Sussex University is hosting a debate about equality for women. But when one of the debating group goes missing, attention turns away from social injustice to something more sinister.
It seems every one of the group has something to hide, and when a second tragedy occurs, two of the delegates – amateur sleuth Janie Juke, and reporter Libby Frobisher – are prepared to make themselves unpopular to flush out the truth. Who is lying and why?
Alongside the police investigation, Janie and Libby are determined to prise answers from the tight-lipped group, as they find themselves in a race against time to stop another victim being targeted.
In A Notable Omission we meet Janie at the start of a new decade. When we left Janie at the end of The Invisible Case she was enjoying her new found skills and success as an amateur sleuth. Here we meet her a few months later, stealing a few days away from being a wife and mother, attending a local conference on women’s liberation to do some soul-searching…
My Review:
Alrighty! Let’s jump right to my review! This book is definitely a fast read, I read it in two days and really enjoyed it!
This book has a ton of twist and turns in it, that really kept me guessing. Something that really stood out to me is that the mystery is so early in the book, you are still getting to know the characters when one goes missing.
At first I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but I truly loved that about this book. The reader is able to see how everyone is reacting to everything being said, and the fact that one of them is missing. The idea that everyone has something to hide and the only way to piece everything together is by the little slips that most people would miss in an everyday conversation.
Something that I truly love about this book is that although the two main characters, Libby and Janie are really into mysteries and solving crimes they aren’t technically the ones solving the crime. They are able to help the detectives but they are not the people that single-handedly solve the crime. This was so much more realistic to me. I also really enjoyed that we got the detectives perspectives a few times. This gave the reader an “in” on both the detectives side and the information that Libby and Janie know.
Even with the reader having all this information the ending STILL surprised me, but once everything unravels it all starts to make sense (Obviously I can’t say too much without spoilers).
This book takes place over just a few days but I feel like that is just enough time to see all the characters stories and pasts unravel before them. Enough time to make everyone a suspect, but also enough time to question everything you may have thought you knew about each character.
I really enjoyed this book full of secrets, and enjoyed digging deeper with Janie and Libby. I recommend this to anyone that wants to read a mystery that they won’t figure out, or a book that you can read during the weekend while relaxing before a busy work week.
Links:
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Notable-Omission-Janie-Juke-mystery-ebook/dp/B0BQCLRYS6
US – https://www.amazon.com/Notable-Omission-Janie-Juke-mystery-ebook/dp/B0BQCLRYS6
https://www.facebook.com/IsabellaMuirAuthor
Author’s Bio:
Isabella is never happier than when she is immersing herself in the sights, sounds and experiences of family life in southern England in past decades – specifically those years from the Second World War through to the early 1970s. Researching all aspects of life back then has formed the perfect launch pad for her works of fiction. It was during two happy years working on and completing her MA in Professional Writing when Isabella rekindled her love of writing fiction and since then she has gone on to publish seven novels, six novellas and two short story collections.
This latest novel, A Notable Omission, is the fourth book in her successful Sussex Crime Mystery series, featuring young librarian and amateur sleuth, Janie Juke. The early books in the series are set in the late 1960s in the fictional seaside town of Tamarisk Bay, where we meet Janie, who looks after the mobile library. She is an avid lover of Agatha Christie stories – in particular Hercule Poirot. Janie uses all she has learned from the Queen of Crime to help solve crimes and mysteries. This latest novel in the series is set along the south coast in Brighton in early 1970, a time when young people were finding their voice and using it to rail against social injustice.
As well as four novels, there are six novellas in the series, set during the Second World War, exploring some of the back story to the Tamarisk Bay characters.
Isabella’s love of Italy shines through all her work and, as she is half-Italian, she has enjoyed bringing all her crime novels to an Italian audience with Italian translations, which are very well received.
Isabella has also written a second series of Sussex Crimes, set in the sixties, featuring retired Italian detective, Giuseppe Bianchi, who is escaping from tragedy in Rome, only to arrive in the quiet seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, to come face-to-face with it once more.
Isabella’s standalone novel, The Forgotten Children, deals with the emotive subject of the child migrants who were sent to Australia – again focusing on family life in the 1960s, when the child migrant policy was still in force.
Find out more about Isabella and her books by visiting her website at: http://www.isabellamuir.com
Read It and Weep with MGD 