Murder at St Anne's by J. R. Ellis

Murder at St Anne's (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery, #7)

by J. R. Ellis

Winter, snow, murder—and a centuries-dead suspect.

In the chilly depths of a Yorkshire winter, a well-liked rector is found bludgeoned to death in her own church. With no sign of a murder weapon, local superstition quickly pins the blame on the ghost of a medieval monk believed to haunt the building…

Well accustomed to unusual murder investigations, DCI Jim Oldroyd takes on the case, along with his assistant, Sergeant Andy Carter, but they are hampered at every turn by the deepening snow and the threat of the supernatural. Even as possible motives and opportunities begin to reveal themselves, Oldroyd struggles to find a better suspect than the hooded phantom.

Has Oldroyd really found himself in the midst of a Gothic ghost story or is there a very real killer at large? Spectre or otherwise, it soon becomes apparent that the murderer is not yet finished. And, for Oldroyd, it’s about to become personal…

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Murder at St Anne's is the 7th Yorkshire mystery featuring DCI Oldroyd by J. R. Ellis. Released 7th Dec 2021 on Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint, it's 284 pages and available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book and the rest of the series are currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.

This series, along with the ensemble cast of Oldroyd, his colleagues, and family as well as the countryside and settings in Yorkshire and environs are always solidly, dependably, engaging reads. In addition to the well constructed puzzles of the actual mysteries, the author has salient points to make about the nature of humanity (with all our foibles). Lead character Oldroyd himself is quietly intelligent and competent. I enjoy seeing his interactions with his colleagues and his family. His sister Alison features prominently in this installment, and it's always enlightening to see the interplay between the detective and his sister.

There's a convoluted and technical puzzle to the "locked room" aspect of the first murder since there are massive injuries not consistent with a hand-held blunt instrument and Oldroyd has to figure out the physics involved in the crime. Some of the descriptions were difficult for me to envision and I had to re-read the salient passages a couple times to sort of understand what was going on. I'm still not sure I buy it entirely, but fair play on the author, it is cleverly done and I'd never have thought of it in a million years.

Although this is the 7th book in the series, all of the individual mysteries are self contained and can reasonably be read in any order.

Four stars. Well written and worthwhile. Definitely a series for fans of modern British procedurals. This is also a good weekend-binge-worthy series with solid plotting, good characterizations, and satisfying denouements and resolutions.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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