Charity shops are not an overly mined setting or background for a mystery. Elizabeth Ferrars had some bloodied garments brought to a charity shop in The Pretty Pink Shroud (1977), but the charity shop was not the primary focus of the novel. However, looking online, 2022 also saw the publication of another charity shop set series, The Charity Shop Detective Agency by Peter Boland. It appears from the blurb that in this setup the shop volunteers are a force for amateur sleuthing good, but in today’s read by Gertrude Lynley one shop volunteer has to figure out if one of her colleagues and friends, is a murderer, and in particular a murderer who has just recently killed to keep this a secret.
Synopsis
‘Provincial England, 1963. Geraldine Lamb, a kindly volunteer at the Thaxted Hospital Charity Shop, is bewildered when the shop’s awful manager, Mr Keith, is murdered in his home. Just days before, James Keith had confided in her that he suspected one of her fellow volunteers of being a murderer concealing her true identity–but he would not say which one. The police officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Harrow, doesn’t think much of Geraldine’s story. He believes Mr Keith was killed when he surprised a burglar, so Geraldine feels she has no choice but to investigate on her own. Her investigations take her to various places in England, from a smoky nightclub in London to a forbidding Shropshire village. She meets many interesting people, but all along, she suspects the solution to James Keith’s murder lies close to home.’
Overall Thoughts
Even if I had not read the blurb for this book, the opening pages strongly herald the demise of the charity shop’s new manager, James Keith. Within a few paragraphs he has ticked a lot of the boxes on the victim checklist…
Victim Checklist
- Do you think you’re always in the right?
- Are you overly and unnecessarily critical of others?
- Are you a bully who likes to make others feel small?
- Are you rude, arrogant and unkind?
- Are you in a position of power which prevents your poor behaviour being challenged?
James Keith fulfils all of these, and the charity shop has barely been open an hour or two! In keeping with many a fictional murder victim Keith’s unpopular actions are not big and ostentatious. He would never damage your car nor physically assault you. As the series amateur sleuth, Geraldine Lamb, thinks to herself: ‘[…] the list of Mr Keith’s offences comprised such piteously minor things. Who would really mind about the handwriting on the price labels, or about separating porcelain from glassware? And yet he managed to infuse these small disagreements with such malice.’
Although told in the third person, the events of the story are seen from Geraldine’s point of view and I think the author does a good job of making her a relatable character, without being too unsubtle about it. I have sometimes found modern mysteries can emphasise this aspect so much, that I start feeling like I am being forced to like the protagonist (which then invariably has the opposite effect on me.) Fortunately, as I already mentioned, this is not a problem in this book. For example, I like how this “relatability” is shared through small details such as when James Keith turns up at Geraldine’s home unannounced to talk about something and when she goes to get him a beverage, we are told: ‘Geraldine made a pot of tea, but despite feeling mean about it, withheld biscuits.’
During this visit Keith reveals that a volunteer at the shop has changed/lied about their past/identity to conceal the fact they are a murderer. Yet he changes his mind on sharing the volunteer’s name, which is naturally the final nail in the coffin, as in crime fiction we all know that the person who knows too much does not have a very long life expectancy! Not too long after this visit James Keith is dead. I think we would have felt cheated if this had not happened.
Lynley’s use of gentle humour is another way in which she gets us on side with Geraldine, as the narration allows some of her private opinions to bleed through:
‘This was the opening Geraldine had been waiting for. “Oh, is that what happened in that nice white house? A burglary?”
“That’s what our daily woman said.” The woman frowned. “She said that the man in the house was killed, too. That seems a bit extreme.”
She made getting murdered sound like a mild social faux pas.
[…]
“I always thought this was a safe neighbourhood, but I suppose all of us can expect to wake up murdered nowadays.” Geraldine’s new friend did not sound as downcast about this as she did about her mother-in-law’s lumbago.’
Without having to directly say “Geraldine thought the following about this woman…”, the author is able to engagingly let us know how Geraldine perceives her interlocutor. I enjoy when a writer does not feel the need to spell everything out to me. What Geraldine thinks and what she says out loud can be quite different at times, which lets the reader feel like they’re being let in on a secret, that the other characters don’t know about.
Inspector Harrow, who is in charge of the police investigation into James Keith’s murder is suitably unresponsive to Geraldine Lamb’s information, which gives her the perfect excuse for doing some sleuthing of her own. It does not take Geraldine long to realise that James Keith had recently been reading a true crime book about female murderers, which I think helps to give Geraldine’s own investigation some shape and clear paths of enquiry to follow. This cold case aspect of the story shares some similarities with Agatha Christie’s Mrs McGinty’s Dead (1952). I like how Geraldine was able to narrow down the cold case possibilities and I felt the author was efficient in relaying these backstories.
Given the cold case basis of the mystery, the writer does a good job of keeping new info and developments coming, to avoid a slackening of pace. Geraldine makes quite a lot of journeys to different places, but unlike in some mysteries, it doesn’t feel like the plot is being dragged out, as each place she visits is justified. None of Geraldine’s investigating feels like a waste of her time or ours. This is not a long tale, only 120 pages but it packs in a fully complete mystery with a clear chain of evidence, which some writers would struggle to manage in 350 pages.
So overall this is an enjoyable quick mystery to read. I think there is one aspect of the solution which stretches plausibility a bit too far for me (I am not convinced the culprit could have got away with one particular thing) but this did not detract from my reading experience particularly. Clues come in a variety of formats, such as details in conversations, but there are some visually reliant ones, which leaves the reader a little at a disadvantage. I don’t think the reader feels too cheated by this though, as it is clear how Geraldine arrived at her conclusions.
This story is available to buy on Kindle and there are three more books in the series: Death Came in the Night (2023), Death Came in Style (2024) and Death Came at Hallowe’en (2025).
Rating: 4.25/5
Source: Review Copy