A Beginner's Guide to Murder by Rosalind Stopps
Published by HQ
Publication Date 22nd July 2021
Book Description:
Grace, Meg and Daphne, all in their seventies, are minding their own business while enjoying a cup of tea in a café, when seventeen-year-old Nina stumbles in. She’s clearly distraught and running from someone, so the three women think nothing of hiding her when a suspicious-looking man starts asking if they’ve seen her.
Once alone, Nina tells the women a little of what she’s running from. The need to protect her is immediate, and Grace, Meg and Daphne vow to do just this. But how? They soon realise there really is only one answer: murder.
And so begins the tale of the three most unlikely murderers-in-the-making, and may hell protect anyone who underestimates them.
My Thoughts:
I must start my review by saying that this book was really not what I expected. Not in a bad way, it just gave a completely different vibe to what I was expecting when I chose it from the library shelf. It's along the lines of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club in that it's very character driven and more in the cosy crime genre. That's not to say that it doesn't tackle some gritty issues, far from it. Although most of the characters are "of a certain age" the issues they face are very much of our times.
Three retired ladies are enjoying a post yoga class cuppa together in a local cafe when a clearly distressed young woman bursts into the establishment. By some sixth sense the ladies know that it is their mission to protect this young woman and there begins their adventure and the start of a close-knit group.
As I said before this book is very character-driven, and we get to know quite a lot about the 3 older ladies' lives before they turned into invisible pensioners who nobody expects to ever have had anything interesting happen to them. It turns out these 3 ladies all have very diverse backgrounds and still have plenty to offer a young girl who made one wrong decision which changed her life completely.
Among the horrific events which Nina is subjected to and some sad situations which the older ladies relate, there are some comical moments and I found myself warming to each of the 4 ladies in different ways. This book certainly makes you realise how our society makes it easy for traffickers to target people from certain backgrounds and just how little support and guidance there is for them to recognise potential dangers from the unscrupulous gangs who operate across the world, not just in the UK. We never imagine it's happening on our doorstep.
I found this to be a fairly quick read and was cheering the women on in their quest for justice - even if it needed some decidedly illegal actions in order to achieve the desired result! The moral of the story: Never underestimate a pensioner!
About the Author:
Rosalind Stopps has always wanted to tell the stories of the less heard. For many years she worked with children with disabilities and their families.
She has five grown up children, three grandchildren and an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University. Rosalind’s short stories have been published in five anthologies and read at live literature events in London, Leeds, Hong Kong and New York.
She lives is South East London with large numbers of humans and dogs. When she is not writing fiction she is, mostly, reading it or working as a host at London’s South Bank Arts Centre.
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