Release Date: May 2nd, 2022 (US)

Genre(s): Adult Fiction, Mystery, Cozy Mystery

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Pages: 304

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Sourcebooks Early Reads for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis

To solve an impossible murder, you need an impossible hero…

Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…

Review

The Marlow Murder Club checked my boxes for a good cozy mystery – an intriguing puzzle to solve, a story that takes off, and just a bit of lightheartedness that makes the genre.

I liked Judith as the main character. Although I was unsure of her at first, I ended up really enjoying her complexity as a character and how her experience with building crossword puzzles was an applicable skill to solve the mystery. I also really liked having an older character take the stage in a book, which is something I don’t see often.
–
The one thing that I didn’t like about this book was the inaccuracies with the police procedural scenes and how easily Judith is able to be involved without pushback. This was intentional and isn’t infrequent by any means in cozy mysteries, but I would have preferred something slightly more realistic.

But aside from that, The Marlow Murder Club essentially checked off all the boxes for what I love in a good cozy mystery!

Goodreads |Bookshop