It’s set in the community of crime writers, agents and publishers — a world Griffiths knows well. In a West Sussex coastal town, Ukrainian care worker Natalka discovers the elderly Peggy Smith dead by a window — natural causes? Natalka, Harbinder and ex-monk Benedict form an ill-assorted group to investigate the dead woman’s enigmatic past. Eccentric bands of sleuths are coming back into fashion (Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, for example), but Griffiths carves out her own very distinctive niche in this sub-genre, balancing humour and suspense with some aplomb.
This charmingly old-fashioned murder mystery starts with the death of an elderly woman in sheltered housing on the south coast...
Griffiths assembles a vivid cast of characters, offering an enjoyably modern take on an old genre.
Gorgeous Natalka, a carer from Ukraine, bookish Benedict, a monk turned barista, and bow-tied Edwin, a gay TV producer long retired from the BBC, make their way to a book festival in Aberdeen to investigate. DS Harbinder Kaur, who has an eye for the girls, does not approve. The Postscript Murders may be “the same old stuff” about guns, sex and death, but it is also a light-hearted and life-affirming celebration of crime fiction and the colourful characters that create it. And isn’t “the daffodil-stalk freshness of new books” just perfect? Only a churl would sniff at such witty and charming entertainment.
