The verdict is in

Ah, what a delight - excited that there’s a new Julia Chapman treat on the horizon with the eighth in the Dales Detective series, Date with Evil (04/23). A terrific series which started with Date with Death in 2017, introducing Bruncliffe resident Delilah Metcalfe, struggling to keep her Dating Agency afloat and controlling her eccentric dog, Tolpuddle.

And ex-policeman, Samson O’Brien, recently sacked from the force and intent on setting up a Detective Agency in his home town. His first case, a supposed suicide, leads to the door of Delilah’s agency. As if she needed any more hassle!

You'll know that I help edit and proofread re-issues from two local publishers Galileo and Oleander (with their OREON Golden Age imprint). Well, with my checking of texts after these books have been re-set, I’m indebted to Cambridge’s Taank Optometrists’s and their wonderful continued care for my eyes! But also for their generosity in allowing the use of their space for some faves. Stylish shelves in an alcove at the back house their most recent well-deserved award and a few titles, including some of those in our OREON Golden Age series of detective stories - Death of an Editor by Vernon Loder, The Fatal Five Minutes by R A J Walling and The Yorkshire Moorland Mystery by J S Fletcher.

Whilst wandering the town centre and trawling old haunts the other day I stepped into Heffers and spotted part of the crime fiction section housed on the below-the-waist shelves just by the stairs in the centre of the shop. A sense of deja vu - that's where I'd originally set up the shop's first dedicated section to the genre over thirty-three years ago! I'm proud that, over the ensuing decades, we managed to build it to one of the best selections in the country!

And today's Jacket From The Attic -  whilst searching through the (extensive!) section of Penguin Green Crime classics I came across one of my favourite books and now available in the British Library Crime Classics reprints series - Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve - where those twelve members of the jury each carry their secret burden of guilt…a wonderful read! I urge you to try it if you haven't yet.

Cheerio for now!

Books mentioned:
Julia Chapman: Date with Death (9781035002368)
Date with Evil (04/23) (9781529095401)
J S Fletcher: The Yorkshire Moorland Mystery (9781915475008)
Vernon Loder: Death of an Editor (9781915475152)
Raymond Postgate: Verdict of Twelve (9780712356749)
R A J Walling: The Fatal Five Minutes (9781915475176)