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    The Cruellest Month
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    The Cruellest Month
    Unavailable
    The Cruellest Month
    Ebook206 pages3 hours

    The Cruellest Month

    By Hazel Holt

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    When Sheila Malory's godson finds Ms. Richmond, a librarian in Oxford’s New Bodleian library, crushed under collapsed bookshelves, Mrs. Malory probes the victim’s past in search of answers. Could Gwen, who had many enemies, have been murdered for blackmail? Holt's civilized and tantalizing mystery explores both modern Oxford and rural wartime England. Book 2 in Holt’s Mrs. Malory series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCoffeetown Press
    Release dateJun 21, 2010
    ISBN9781603810548
    Unavailable
    The Cruellest Month
    Author

    Hazel Holt

    Hazel Holt was born in Birmingham and was educated at King Edward VI High School and Newnham College, Cambridge. She worked as an editor, reviewer and feature writer before turning to fiction in an attempt to keep up with her son, the novelist Tom Holt. Hazel is also the literary executor of Barbara Pym's estate. Hazel's life is divided between writing, cooking and trying to cope with the demands of her Siamese cat, Flip. She lives in Somerset.

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    Reviews for The Cruellest Month

    3.5/5

    37 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Once again I enjoyed a mystery with roots in World War II. This time it was Sheila Malory, literary critic and indefatigable volunteer in the village of Taviscombe, who is visiting Oxford and solves the mystery. Hazel Holt was a friend and literary executor of Barbara Pym and one can see why.
    • 5/5
      In The Cruellest Month, Sheila Malory visits Oxford where her son is studying. She arrives to find him upset by the death of a staff member in the Bodleian Library so, rather reluctantly, she begins to investigate the circumstances and finds that memories from her own past are raked up. Meanwhile, she is staying with friends in one of those chaotic academic households that would drive anyone with an ounce of organisation absolutely demented - it's a wonderful portrait that really enriches this book and makes a wonderful contrast to, say, Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers) which I've also just read. On the face of it a "cosy" mystery, The Cruellest Month is very much in the Sayers tradition, and is my favourite of the Mrs Malory books.
    • 3/5
      While visiting in Oxford to do some research, Sheila Malory is drawn to investigate the death of a very unpleasant library whose death has been ruled an accident. Despite a charming Oxford setting, I found this book disappointing. The heroine comes off as a rather officious busybody.
    • 4/5
      Kind of a thin plot, but the character development in this second installment of the Mrs. Malory series is well done. Mrs. Malory begins to emerge as a more complex, fallible, and interesting character. And the descriptions of Oxford and the Bodleian Library, as well as the connections to Dorothy Sayers and _Gaudy Night_, are all delightful for and Anglophile book geek like myself.