Published By: Faber
Pages: 336
Released On: 13/03/2025
The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.
Somewhere in the north, a religious community meets for Vespers. Here on the southeast coast, Nora Breen prepares for braised liver and a dining room full of strangers.
After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Why there? Why now? Instinct tells her it’s better not to reveal her reasons right now. She takes a room at Gulls Nest guest house and settles in to watch and listen.
Over disappointing – and sometimes downright inedible – dinners, Nora realises that she was right to keep quiet: her fellow lodgers are hiding something. At long last, she has found an outlet for her powers of observation and, well, nosiness: there is a mystery to solve, and she is the only person for the job.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Faber for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I do own another of Jess’ books – The Night Ship – but haven’t read it yet, and so this was my first taste into her work.
It’s a mixture of cosy crime, mystery, historical, detective, even a bit of humour and slightly romance.
There’s a large number of characters, all with their own benefits and hindrances. I did think at times there were perhaps a few too many to give full attention to, and I’m not sure they were all needed. I didn’t warm to Nora to begin with. I’m not sure why. She wasn’t particularly unlikeable, but I was wary of her I suppose for a while, I couldn’t quite figure her out.
There are twists and turns, but more akin to a cosy crime than a thriller, which was nice. And yet, to contradict myself, it did, at times, feel a bit darker like a thriller. So it flits from both ends of the spectrum in that regard, so you get a bit of cosy crime but a bit of that thrilling darkness.
Jess has managed to evoke the nostalgia of a British seaside trip in the fifties – even though I wasn’t around at that time to feel nostalgic about it.
I feel it could either have been shorter, or faster. As it is, at 352 pages, it isn’t overly long, but it felt drawn out. So I think it either needs to be about 100 pages shorter with the content as it is, or it needs to have a bit more going on in terms of pacing, otherwise those 352 pages feel a lot longer.
It’s not the greatest of the genre I’ve read – and I’ve read a lot recently – but there’s definitely promise. No-one can deny Jess’ ability to create atmosphere and a really impressive sense of space and time and character. I think if there were less characters, more meat on the story, and was a bit quicker, then it would have been a first-rate story. As it is, it’s an enjoyable, fun, interesting opening to a series (at least, I assume it’s a series), that’ll be enjoyed by many fans of the cosy crime genre.
Books By Your Bedside 