Written by Gina Cheyne
Highly
|
| Published by | Fly Fizzi Ltd (1 Sept. 2024)Women |
| Genre | Women's Crime Fiction |
| Pages | 242 |
| ASIN | B0D8BK2C34 |
Today I am taking part in a blog tour organised by Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources
for Gina Cheyne's latest novel, After The Husbands. And I must first of all thank Rachel for the invitation to join this tour and Ms Cheyne for a free digital copy of her recently published novel to review.
for Gina Cheyne's latest novel, After The Husbands. And I must first of all thank Rachel for the invitation to join this tour and Ms Cheyne for a free digital copy of her recently published novel to review.
The blurb:
After The HusbandsWhat do you do when you’ve buried four husbands and not yet found a fifth?
Wealthy Lady Bumstead takes a cruise down the Mekong in Vietnam with a hired female companion, Anne de Tonkin. Annie is not just a kind old lady, she is a brilliant listener and soon knows all about the other travellers. But, on the last day of the cruise she is murdered.
Lady Bumstead, unable to see any reason why Annie should be murdered, is convinced the killer was after her. She hires the SeeMs Detective Agency to protect her and find the killer. At the same time she decides to do some sleuthing herself, and, with the help of her high powered hearing aid, she begins listening to all the conversations around her.
As the SeeMs Detectives investigate the crime, they find Annie had a rich past and connections with almost everyone else on the boat. There seem to be plenty of reasons for killing her, but who did the deed?
Will Lady Bumstead and the SeeMs Detectives find the killer before he/she strikes again? Will Lady Bumstead find a fifth husband? Or will she become another victim?
Written in the first person by Lady Bumstead this novel will be particularly enjoyed by readers of Agatha Christie and A Man Called Otto. Or anyone interested in whodunnits.
Women's Crime Fiction
My thoughts:
Something about the book cover and the blurb for After The Husbands caught my attention, and I felt this was a novel I just could not pass up. And I was right! Once I started it, I ripped through it in a matter of days.To begin. A little bit of added information I always welcome, the Foreword explains that, for the most part, the chapter titles are Vietnamese proverbs and goes on to describe some of those which are more difficult to comprehend. I found this both interesting and amusing.
I was hooked before I'd finished reading the Prologue, and desperately needed to know how all this drama with shadowy figures in Singapore some fifty-six years earlier, might relate to events in the here and now.
The story is told in the first person by Lady Bumstead. Lady Bumstead - pronounced 'Boom-ste-ad', is a widow, having outlived four husbands. She takes Quaaludes to help her sleep, and while under their influence, we learn about her deceased husbands. She obviously married for money with the exception of husband number two, Phillip Le Tank, whom she loved wholeheartedly.
I was very taken with Lady Bumstead's character and loved her caustic wit and story-telling voice. I imagined her to be a modern day Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham as played by the wonderfully talented Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.
The murder takes place on the boat towards the end of their cruise on the Mekong River. Lady Bumstead is woken one morning with the news that her companion Miss Annie De Tonkin has been murdered in the adjoining room. Lady Bumstead proffers plausible reasons why the killer may have mistaken Annie for herself and that her own life might still be in jeopardy. She is rather put out that she is not being taken seriously and might be the killer's next victim, so brings in her own investigators.
A team of three female detectives from the SeeMs Detective Agency arrive on board the boat to investigate the murder alongside representatives from both the Vietnamese and Cambodian police forces.
Often eavesdropping other guests and her detectives with her high-powered hearing aid, Lady Bumstead gathers information herself and speculates about motives and the identity of the killer.
I was quite taken in with the idea that Lady Bumstead was the intended victim as she made such a good case for it, but as the story progresses and we learn about the connections Annie had to the other passengers on the boat, I wondered whether one of the other passengers or crew may have had reason to want her dead.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story and was so completely side-tracked by Lady Bumstead's demeanour, that I completely failed to spot the murderer.
| Author Bio – Gina Cheyne |
|---|
 Gina has worked as a pilot, physiotherapist, freelance writer and dog breeder. As a child, Gina's parents hated travelling and never went further than Jersey. As a result she became travel-addicted and spent years bumming around SE Asia, China and Australia, where she worked in a racing stables in Pinjarra, South of Perth. She then lived and worked in various places in Spain, the USA and London before settling in West Sussex with her husband and dogs. This is her fifth crime novel in the SeeMs Detective Agency series. This book is set in Vietnam. |
| Social Media Links – | |
| Web site | https://ginacheyne.com/ |
| https://www.instagram.com/ginacheynewriter/ | |
| Facebook Author Page | https://www.facebook.com/gina.cheyne.books |
| Reedsy.com | https://reedsy.com/discovery/user/ginacheyne |
| TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@flyfizzi |
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