Welcome to another Friday Reads blog. Today I’m featuring the addictive, historical cosy mystery, Murder on Stage by F.L.Everett. This is the third book in the Edie York Mystery series.

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Blurb

England, 1941. Trainee reporter Edie York is doing her best to keep calm and carry on despite London’s Blitz dominating the news. But, at the theatre one night, she is thrust into a shocking mystery when the lead actor drops dead on stage…

The Victory Gang Parade theatre group are in town, entertaining the troops and the determinedly cheerful people of Manchester with their spectacular all-singing all-dancing show. But We’ll Meet Again becomes impossible for two cast members, when Leonard Lessiter dies suddenly mid-song, and leading lady Ginny Sutton goes missing the very same night.

Reluctantly encouraged by DCI Louis Brennan – up to his ears catching looters and ration cheats – to investigate, Edie interviews the cast and quickly uncovers jealousies, lies and back-stabbings galore. From former lovers to bitter rejects, old hands to up-and-coming ingénues, any one of them could be guilty. And the leading lady Ginny is still missing.

Then Edie gets caught in a bombing raid and finds her chief suspect stabbed with a stage dagger. As the body count climbs, will Edie and Louis find Ginny alive? Can they uncover the most theatrical killer they’ve ever encountered? Or will it be the final curtain call for the detecting duo…?

A compelling and addictive historical cozy mystery perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Agatha Christie. Totally unputdownable and utterly charming, this is the perfect book to snuggle up and race through an evening with.

Murder on Stage will be published by Bookouture on 18 June.

You can preorder it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CNW4NYNX?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_2&storeType=ebooks

Read what everyone’s saying about F.L. Everett:

‘So much fun with this read!… A wonderfully cheery, sparky heroine… This story just makes me want to curl up with chai tea and journey alongside Edie on her humorous yet ever-deeper case.’ Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Cosy and murdery and a great read!’NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Bloody brilliant!… wonderful… so clever and witty… Loved it.’ Claire Swatman

‘I fell head over heels for Edie and couldn’t put this down. Completely charming and deserves to be a huge hit.’ Bestselling author Mhairi McFarlane

‘Once I started this, I just couldn’t stop… loved…reading this book felt like watching a deliciously nostalgic Sunday night drama… I thoroughly enjoyed every minute.’ Bestselling author Jill Mansell

‘An addictive, authentic page-turner: Edie York has the makings of a classic amateur detective in the great Golden Age tradition.’ Bestselling author Erin Kelly

‘Extremely entertaining and pacey WWII-set murder mystery.’ Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Lively, suspenseful, vivid and the best evocation of WW2 Britain and a young woman making her way in journalism since Dear Mrs Bird, FL Everett’s debut detective novel is delicious fun.’ Amanda Craig

‘From the very first page I was completely immersed in Edie’s world… I loved all the characters instantly and can’t wait to read the next in the series.’ Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘A wonderful read, one that is highly entertaining with a light-hearted mystery. A read with a smile and more!’Goodreads reviewer

‘I absolutely adored… a real joy to read.’ Goodreads reviewer

PRE-ORDER MURDER ON STAGE HERE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CNW4NYNX?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_2&storeType=ebooks

And to whet your appetite even further, here’s an extract:

EDIE YORK, an obituary writer who hopes to be a crime reporter, has accompanied her friend Detective Inspector Lou Brennan and his sister Marie to Manchester’s Gaiety Theatre in May 1941, to watch a company of ENSA actors perform for the troops. 

To my surprise, the whole cast was on stage in army uniform, looking almost unrecognisable from the chic assembly who had eaten with us just an hour earlier. They burst into a rousing rendition of ‘Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’, accompanied by a pianist in the orchestra pit.

‘Look how miserable Leonard looks,’ Lou whispered into my right ear. ‘He’s dying to have his big solo moment.’

I shushed him, but I thought he was right. Leonard’s theatrical verve seemed to have deserted him, and he looked rather flat as Ginny and Josephine waved their arms and encouraged the audience to join in.

They ran offstage and Guy Ferdinand reappeared, wearing a crown and a sort of costume-party tunic, and launched into the victory speech from Henry VI that we’d learned at school. I remembered:

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive

Guy delivered it well. The soldiers behind me were whispering and guffawing, perhaps not quite so taken with Shakespeare as some of the audience, but they gave him a roar of approval, which continued with accompanying whistling, as Ginny and Josephine returned in tight black evening dresses and sang ‘Lili Marlene’ together. Ginny had a beautiful voice, pure as a crystal bell, and eventually the whole audience hushed and settled as she sang. I imagined her photograph up on billboards, her name in lights, cinema posters reading Starring Ginny Sutton and Clark Gable. Josephine, older at twenty-seven, was talented and attractive – but she didn’t have ‘it’. Ginny did, in spades.

Florence and Stanley came on dressed as charladies and did a sketch about baby Hitler in a washing basket, which got a big laugh, and then the lights dimmed, a single white spotlight beamed down, and Leonard walked onstage. The audience fell silent, and he stood for a moment, surveying us all. He was dressed in military uniform again, but his face was darkened to a deep tan with greasepaint and his white hair oiled flat. He looked like an elderly general who had been forgotten in a far corner of the Empire.

He gazed imperiously at us all, and announced, ‘“The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God”.’ It was a dramatic poem of the kind that Edwardian entertainers recited at supper gatherings. I vaguely recalled it – perhaps it had been on the wireless – but I hadn’t heard it the way Leonard performed.

‘There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,’ he began, a tone of slow-dawning horror to his words. The lads behind me were silent.

‘There’s a little marble cross below the town;

There’s a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,

And the Yellow God forever gazes down…’

He carried on, detailing the lovesick swain’s stealing of the God’s jewelled green eye for his love, the colonel’s daughter. It was melodramatic doggerel really, but I felt a chill run through me as he intoned,

‘He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,

And a gash across his temple dripping red…’

As he spoke the rest of the verse, Leonard put a hand to his chest, and kept it there, over his heart, as if he, too, were in mortal agony. He seemed to stagger slightly as he withdrew a shining dagger from his belt and held it up.

‘An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,’ he declaimed, his voice breaking. ‘’Twas the vengeance of the… th… l’il… the yewl…’

Leonard stopped speaking and staggered. The dagger clattered to the stage and Marie turned to me, shock in her eyes.

Lou was up on his feet before anyone else in the auditorium, as Leonard folded sideways. Some thought it was part of the act and began to applaud, but from our position in the stalls, we had seen his face, grey beneath the make-up, and the sweat beading on his brow.

It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? I asked F.L Everett what inspired her to write the book. Here’s her interesting reply.

THE JOY OF THE AMATEUR: WHY I LOVE WRITING ‘COSY CRIME’

My third ‘cosy crime’ novel, Murder on Stage, comes out in June. Like the previous books in my Edie York series, it’s set in Manchester during the War, and features my obituary-writing heroine, who longs to be a real crime reporter, getting herself entangled in another nasty case of murder – this time with a theatrical troupe who are touring for ENSA, the wartime entertainments department.

Back in 1939, very few ‘respectable’ middle-class women worked outside the home. The idea was, you’d leave school, take a ‘little job’ as a secretary or teacher and mark time until you were snapped up by an eligible bachelor and set down by the domestic hearth like a fire-guard. I wanted to create a character who railed against those expectations, and orphaned Edie York, who has no inheritance, no degree, and certainly no string of eligible men after her, is that young woman. She’s grown up reading detective novels in the ‘Golden Age’ of crime writing, and all she wants in the world is to solve crimes herself.  But while the War has offered millions of young women the chance to enter the workplace, while the men are away fighting, there’s not much option of promotion – so Edie is forced to used her understanding of people, and her innate intelligence, to help harassed Detective Inspector Louis Brennan solve a series of murders…

Luckily, the true joy of cosy crime lies in the involvement of the intelligent amateur. From Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Whimsey, to poor old overlooked Doctor Watson himself, some of the greatest characters in crime fiction have sprung from the intriguing idea of the curious bystander. They act as a foil for the weary professionals, able to explore domestic situations that would be impossible (and often illegal) for the police to infiltrate. In Miss Marple’s case, she has a great many friends with large country houses, and has long been a student of human nature. In Edie’s, she’s researching obituaries – so of course she’s asking tricky questions.

I love writing these books, partly because I see a bit of myself in Edie – she’s highly determined, keen to do the right thing, and entirely capable of making a complete idiot of herself. Like me, she’s also a journalist, though my own career has never had the slightest acquaintance with crime.  Instead, I’ve spent a lifetime reading about murder, and humankind’s everlasting desire to solve the mystery.

Edie’s outer world is chaos – as Murder on Stage opens, the London blitz is raining down, and later, she’ll find herself caught up in a terrifying raid. Solving crime amidst the horror is one way of bringing order to a random and frightening world, and I suspect that’s why we still love the comfort of a cosy crime novel, all these years later.

A Report of Murder and Murder in a Country Village by F.L.Everett (Bookouture) are now available on Amazon. Murder on Stage is published June 18.

Meet the Author

AUTHOR BIO

I’m a writer and I live in rural Scotland, though I make frequent visits to Manchester, my beloved hometown. I’ve been a freelance journalist for many years – I’ve written (and still write) columns and features for national newspapers and magazines, and I’ve edited several glossy mags. I’ve also been a broadcaster, agony aunt, vintage shop owner, tarot reader and author of fiction and non-fiction (you can find those books under Flic Everett). Now, I write the Edie York cozy mystery series (Bookouture). I love history, mystery and Manchester so setting my books there in WW2 ticks all my crime fiction boxes.

I live with my husband, two spaniels and one black cat, in a very small cottage between the forest and the loch. My favourite things are reading, animals, very hot baths, cooking and buying clothes that are hopelessly unsuitable for my life. I have one grown-up son, and a never-ending appetite for rummaging in charity shops.

Contact links

X: @fliceverett

Insta: Instagram.com/f.l.everett_author

FB: Facecook.com/F.L.Everett

Thanks so much for dropping by to tell us about your new book today, F.L. Everett. Wishing you lots of success with it.

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