ARC REVIEW: Murder At Everham Hall – by Benedict Brown

Title: Murder At Everham Hall
(A Marius Quin Mystery #1)
Author: Benedict Brown
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Historical
First published: November 3rd 2023
Publisher: Storm Publishing
Finished reading: October 23rd 2023
Pages: 278

“It’s easy enough to solve a murder when I choose the killer from the beginning, but writing books didn’t prepare me for the real thing.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Storm Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

REVIEW

It’s true that I don’t usually read a lot of cozy mysteries, but I do love a 1920s setting and there was something about the blurb of Murder At Everham Hall that intrigued me. Add a comparison to Agatha Christie and I couldn’t resist adding this first book of a new series to my shelves. Now that I’ve had the chance to read it, I’m sad to say that I ended up struggling quite a bit with this story and it wasn’t the positive reading experience I thought it was going to be. I’ll try to explain briefly what did and didn’t work for me.

First of all I do have to say that I still like the premise of this story, with the 1920s Everham Hall setting, the locked room vibe and the fact that the characters are snowed in and decide to investigate the murder while they wait for the police. This all had such an Agatha Christie feel to it, and it’s probably the main reason I kept reading. Sadly the plot twists and ‘surprise’ suspects were actually all quite predictable though, and as a result the story fell rather flat for me. I was also disappointed to hardly find any ‘real’ investigating going on; instead it was mostly clumsily performed interrogations/conversations.

My main issue is with the main characters though. I never warmed up to Marius Quin, and having to spend time with his thoughts as well as his actions started to irritate me more and more. I didn’t feel the chemistry with Bella either, and as a result this amateur duo wasn’t able to charm me nor were they able to convince me they were up to the task. The worst part is probably the romance itself, with both the very present love triangle, jealousy and pining. It’s such a shame there was so much focus on the romance instead of the mystery, because it really ruined the story for me.

I did like the bookish element, with the main character being an author and trying to write his next book. The Everham Hall setting is also well described, and the winter weather added the right atmosphere for this story. The dog Percy was likewise a nice touch, although he was a bit too passive to add much to the story. The rest of the characters were mostly built out of cliches, and I wish they would have been fleshed out more to help add more dept to the story. As it is, I felt like I never got to know any of them.

In short, unfortunately Murder At Everham Hall and me didn’t get along as much as I hoped. There were elements I liked, but between the romance, characters and disappointing plot twists there were too many things that somehow didn’t work for me. I seem to be in the minority so far though, so it might just be the pesky reading slump acting up again.