March 1, 2025
An undercover nun tracks the fate of a lost friend and solves a dastardly murder in an English seaside town. A brief, murky prologue describes an unnamed woman trapped in a tunnel overrun with rats, with little hope of escape. Cut to determined Nora Breen, arriving at the down-at-heels coastal boardinghouse Gulls Nest on a mission. She's set aside her decades-long identity as Sister Agnes of Christ to find her friend and former novice Frieda Brogan, who went to the seaside on doctor's orders and raised Nora's concern by abruptly halting their frequent correspondence. At the Nest, Nora meets a large and quirky cast of suspects-to-be, including the brusque landlady, Helena Wells; handsome young couple Teddy and Stella Atkins; elderly showman Professor Poppy, who has an unsettling attraction to his collection of Punch puppets; and Mrs. Wells' precocious daughter, Dinah. She's just getting to know her new housemates when the Frieda mystery is shoved to the back burner by the fatal poisoning of Teddy. Even after sturdy DI Rideout arrives to investigate, Nora doggedly continues to ask questions as well. Suspicion falls on Czech guest Karel Jezek, who's gone missing. In fact, the deeper Nora digs, the more incriminating evidence she discovers about the entire Gulls Nest group. Nora's surveillance of Irene, Helena's assistant, leads to the first significant tidbit about Frieda's disappearance. Lest there be any doubt that Nora's further adventures will include the colorful residents of Gulls Nest, the story fades out with Rideout requesting Nora's help on another baffling case. A delightful series kickoff in a cozy community primed for more murder.
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Starred review from April 1, 2025
Each of Jess Kidd's novels (most recently The Night Ship, 2022) is refreshingly distinctive. Here, the author delivers a compelling and original mystery in a post-war 1954 UK setting. Sister Agnes is now an ex-nun, Nora Breen, but it appears that while you can take the nun out of the monastery, you can never take the monastery out of the nun. As a Carmelite nurse for 30 years, she gained a singular ability to focus, and focus she does when she leaves the order to resolve the disappearance of a young postulant, Frieda Brogan. Nora takes up lodging in Gulls Nest, a down-at-heel guesthouse in the oddly named Gore-on-Sea, a Kent seaside town, where Frieda had been staying when she went missing. An Agatha Christie-like ensemble of bizarre characters boards there, and when they start dying off, Nora ingratiates herself with Inspector Rideout of the local constabulary, with whom she develops an unusual relationship. The narrative is somewhat dark yet diverting. Kidd brilliantly doles out a considerable number of red herrings only to artfully dismiss them, and provides a stunning conclusion. The reader is left hoping for a sequel, if not a series, featuring the engaging Nora.
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