Thank you to Net Galley and Sourcebooks Publishing for an early copy of The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald

Fans of "who dun its" will tackle The Murders in Great Diddling with real enthusiasm as there is no lack of suspects or clues in trying to solve two murders in a small Cornish town.

Daphne Trent is a central character in the town where she lives with an unheard of number of books, many of them rare and many autographed by the authors. When her nephew, Reginald, arrives at her Tawny Hall home, it will not take long to discover his true motivations.

Berit Gardner is a mystery writer presently in the same town. She is being hounded by her literary agent, Olivia Marsch, to write her next novel. Olivia sends her daughter, Sally, to Gardner to spur on the writing and deliver the next bestseller.

Following a mysterious explosion in the town, Reginald is found dead. Inspector Ian Ahmad is assigned to the case, but Berit will be one step ahead of him through the investigation. When a second body is discovered, Berit will put clues together leading to a solution to the crimes. The only place where the story stumbles is at a book festival sponsored by the town but features local characters impersonating well-known authors. Participants in book festivals would be able to catch on to the deception very easily no matter how good the acting.

Suspenseful and engaging, The Murders in Great Diddling makes use of many of the titles in Berit Gardner's collection which will thrill the many voracious readers who love reading about books.

This was a well-written and fun read. It is well-written and keeps you engaged.
Finished this over a weekend and had such a fun time reading this... this is my idea of a cozy read where you just get involved in the story while snuggled in your blankets sipping a nice warm drink.

Curmudgeonly author Berit Gardner moved from her longtime home in London to an isolated village in Cornwall to shake things up. Her writer’s block had been going on for months, and Berit — an egalitarian, she insists everyone call her by first name — thought a change of locale would provoke a change in mindset. Well, Berit’s more shaken than she bargained for: On the same day, she gains an unwanted assistant and a front row view to a literally explosive murder.

Now any reader could see the loathed Reginald Trent, a greedy, arrogant financier from London, was the obvious victim. (No spoilers, as he’s blown to bits early in the novel.) But the real treat is to follow Berit and her darling but insecure assistant, Sally Marsch, as they investigate the crime. Funny, clever and with a laser focus on the foibles of villagers high and low, The Murders in Great Diddling filled me with joy to read and even more joy to discover that it’s the first in a new cozy mystery series. Highly, highly recommended.

Katarina Bivald is herself a Swedish author, making this book even more fun. Unlike Berit, Ms. Bivald remains happily at home in Sweden, just outside of Stockholm.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review.

At its heart, The Murders in Great Diddling is really a homage to books and the people who love them – the murder mystery is just a bonus. There's an author and a book collector and an aspiring literary agent and a book festival, and it's really quite a fun and bookish read.

Be forewarned, however, that this is a meandering slow burn of a novel. There are a million tangents and pieces to the story, and if you're just looking for a quick and cozy murder mystery that gets straight to the point, well … this isn't that kind of book. There's a lot about the characters' backstories and the relationships between the villagers, and you'll learn all about how to hack together a book festival in two weeks' time. The murder mystery kind of fits in between all of these other pieces of the story. I mostly enjoyed it, but I did find myself wishing that the novel were little more concise and perhaps a hundred pages shorter.

If you're a fan of literature, however, this novel is really quite the treat. Books from various genres and eras make an appearance in the story, from a Neil Gaiman first edition to a signed copy of Oscar Wilde's works. There are literary easter eggs sprinkled throughout the text – there's a reference to Helene Hanff and her memoir The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street that's quite amusing. And, I mean, who doesn't aspire to be a Daphne? If I had a huge manor house at my disposal, I would almost certainly fill it to the brim with books too.

The mystery itself is decent but not anything particularly novel. (Ha! See what I did there?) There are multiple individuals in Great Diddling who had a reason to want Reginald Trent dead, but who actually did the deed? Berit Gardner is determined to solve the case … even if her literary agent prefers that she were focusing on writing her next novel instead. I can't say that I was particularly surprised by the big reveal, but I also didn't manage to solve it before Berit did.

If you enjoy novels filled with books and humor and heart, The Murders in Great Diddling just might be the read for you. It's not exactly a fast-paced thriller, but it is definitely entertaining.

My overall rating: 3.75 stars, rounded up.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review. Its expected publication date is August 13, 2024.

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC. I love cozy mysteries and this book fits perfectly into that genre. As a reader, you get to know all the strange characters in Great Diddling and what secrets they hold in their past. Hope this becomes a series. Recommend highly for fans of Louise Penny or Elly Griffiths.

Small towns share a few things in common; one is putting a nose in a neighbor's affairs. Small towns also don't readily accept newcomers. Great Diddling, small, ordinary, run-down village in England. An author, Berit Gardner, living there, is trying desperately to start a new book, and it's just not happening. Invited to tea at the village's grand manor, no one seems happy. And then, the explosion happens, killing the nephew of the owner of the manor. Plot follows plot as villagers slowly reveal their stories are not what they first appear.

Great Diddling residents finally realize they need to capitalize on this murder (it does turn out to be a murder - bombs just don't happen but usually are planted by someone), so a book and murder festival is planned. Berit can't stop investigating and each person in the village becomes a suspect. She knows this is the book she must write and she leaves no stone unturned, or should we say, no book unturned, to solve the murder and the riddle of the villagers.

The Murders in Great Diddling

This book took me a bit to get into but after I did it was a fun and cozy read. The author did a wonderful job showing small town village life. I did not see the murder coming and it is always fun when you cannot figure it out. I do wish the main character and some of the supporting characters were a little more likeable but that is person preference. I will be looking for more books from this author and hope life in this cozy village will continue. Perfect rainy-day book.

Thank you, Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't think I've ever before read a book where the inhabitants of a small town resort to such shameless lies to attract tourists to the town itself, and to their first-ever book fair, as I encountered in The Murders in Great Diddling, set in Cornwall. Did Winston Churchill really visit the town during the evacuation of Dunkirk? Had the rare brown booby been spotted there? And did Margaret Atwood and other literary luminaries actually serve on a panel at the book fair? Not a chance, but it's quite hilarious how it all comes about.

Of course, it's also a mystery, so the more serious plotline includes two murders, one explosion, multiple thefts and/or attempted thefts, and a bevy of suspects, several of whom are not at all who they appear to be (or who the townspeople think they are). Confusing? Well, yes. But an author visiting the town for inspiration and the detective inspector leading the murder investigation manage to keep the plot from becoming totally untethered. Nevertheless, getting to the conclusion is entertaining, and delving into the backgrounds and motives of the suspects is a fascinating look at characters who are unconventional, to say the least.

This book is quite different from the author's The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, so it was a surprise for me, but it is definitely worth a read. Side note: Every time there is a referral to the local pub--The Queen's Head, Arms, and Legs--as well as multiple dictionary entries for "diddle," I laughed out loud.

My thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book.

An English village, a cup of tea, and a fresh murder are all I need to find a book engaging. Give that village the name of Great Diddling, and you have Katarina Bivald’s soon-to-be-released cozy mystery. This was my first experience reading anything written by this author. As I generally do, I looked up other books that she had written, read the reviews, and thought this worth giving a try.

In the long run it was worth it, because I really enjoyed the book. But it took me a long time to get into it largely, I think, because I did not care for the main character finding her arrogant, rude, too brusque for my liking, and overall lacking charm and appeal. Case in point, this exchange with the local DCI:

“Daphne Trent likes my books. I just moved to the village. I think she invited almost everyone.”

“Aha! You’re an author. Have I read anything you’ve written?”

“How on earth could I possibly know that?”

This is pretty much how main character Berit Gardner speaks to everyone. I found it tedious after a while, and a bit off putting. Because of this, the book really didn’t draw me in until I was about a quarter of the way through. The secondary characters were vaguely interesting. Other reviewers referred to them as “quirky,“ but I considered most of them to be a bit bland. Surprisingly, the author made that work for her, and, after my initial hesitation, I continued on, and quite enjoyed the story.

It’s a good mystery, fairly well written, and kept me guessing until the end. Grit your teeth, and get through the first few chapters, and then I think that you’ll quite like it too.

This book is okay. I started to enjoy it just over halfway through.
Unfortunately the characters were not particularly likeable for me.
I liked the method of murder, it’s unusual and creative, however I found the book very slow to get into.
Love that the book had a book festival in, and was based all around the love of books.
Love the title and front cover, would buy it based on those alone.

The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald is a great new addition to the mystery genre. I would probably call this cozy-ish since it does have some signature elements such as the setting: a cute town in the English countryside, the main character: an author turned amateur detective, and an absurd town tourism council. However, it also has some gritty characters who make very questionable choices and an eventual murderer who is scarier for blending into the crowd.
The characters in this novel can be fairly zany. Berit Gardner is a Swedish- English author who moved to the small town of Great Diddling to try and overcome a bout of writers block. Her pushy editor sends a quirky young assistant to keep an eye on her writing habits and the two end up embroiled in a murder investigation turned town-wide book and murder festival that ends up more true crime than anyone expected. Con artists abound in this small town that (may have) once hosted Winston Churchill. Everyone is a suspect in this fun adventure.
At times I did find the pacing of the novel to be slow, especially in the beginning. It took a while for me to be completely invested and intrigued in the mystery. There are also quite a few minor word errors throughout. I’m sure they’ll be fixed before printing, but it took me out of the story. Overall though not many critiques!
The setting was perfect for the gossipy town Bivald created. It helped push the ideas as well as the characters did. The characters were carefully described and I could picture them easily. The plot was fun. I loved how the town actually pulled off the festival. Eleanor was delightfully bad. I did have the murdered pegged as one of the better suspects but it was validating if not completely surprising during the reveal. Overall 3.5/5 stars rounded up to 4! Thank you for the ARC of this book.

If you like your murder mysteries to take place in a small English village and be populated with a wide array of characters both quirky and colorful, this is the book for you. Berit has fled to the countryside to seek inspiration, and her agent soon sends her own daughter to keep an eye on her and make sure Berit is writing. Berit finds it hard to concentrate on writing after a local is blown up during a tea party, so she sets out to solve the case alongside the half amused, half perturbed local inspector. And because a murder is a great excuse to plan an event, the locals capitalize on their new notoriety by hastily assembling a "Murder and Book Festival". There are wigs, con artists, madcappery, and of course books galore in this often zany, very fun book.

The Murders in Great Diddling is a cozy mystery set in present day England. Author Britt has been sucked into English country village life and she makes new friends. However, when one of the village's inhabitants is murdered, she cannot rest until she cracks the case. Along the way, she solidifies friendships and delves into psychology.

This book was delightful. It was so easy to read right before bed because it has a calm pace that won't stimulate you before slumber. It is a cozy mystery, so the clues are not necessarily laid bare for all to discover, but it has a strong focus on character development, which I truly enjoyed.

My one complaint is that this book features some token gender bending characters. I am very tired of this trope popping up in every single work of contemporary fiction.

All in all, a good read that I can recommend.

It took me a while to really get into this book, but I did. A fascinating look at life in a small village full of personalities, an author new to town, and the difference that friendship can make

This English village mystery is warm and funny with a sharp edge. It kept be riveted to the end and I will be looking for more from t his author.

unpleasant-victims, unpleasant-boss, writers, Cornwall, multiple-perspectives, coming-of-age, women-s-fiction, village-life, bibliomania, theft, greed, explosion, murder-investigation, friction, friends, friendship, rare-books, festivals, secrets, lies, library, suspense, local-gossip, local-law-enforcement, local-politics, twisty*****

There is a phenomenon in Norway known as Slow TV. This book reminds me of that because it is slow (duh), has many perspectives, personalities, threads that work together, and it all concludes with something amazing. The characters are all quirky in one way or another but the overarching main character is BOOKS. Loved it!
I requested and received a free temporary EARC from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you!
Pub Date Aug 13 2024

I love murder mysteries set in sleepy towns and this was no exception. Berit Gardner is an author who recently moved to Great Diddling, a town dependent on tourist traffic and the few locals. While attending her first event and meeting the locals, someone is murdered! Berit gets involved in investigating and attempting to solve the murder. All of the characters were interesting and distinct, I liked getting to know all the townspeople. I don’t normally like multiple POVs but I thought it was well done and provided a lot of information here. The setting was immersive and was a great addition to the cozy vibes. I thought the story had great moments of comedy and I enjoyed the mystery as well. I was guessing until the very end

Thanks to NetGalley, Katarina Bivald and Poisoned Pen Press for this e-ARC

I just finished Katarina Bivald's latest novel, The Murders in Great Diddling, and I must say, it was an absolute delight! As a huge fan of her previous novels, I had high expectations for this one, and I am thrilled to say that it did not disappoint.

The Murders in Great Diddling is a cozy mystery that is driven by its well-crafted characters. From the beginning, I was drawn into the lives of the inhabitants of the small village of Great Diddling and their quirky personalities. The mystery itself is cleverly crafted, with plenty of twists and turns to keep me on the hook. I found myself completely immersed in the story, and I was sad to see it end.

Overall, I would highly recommend The Murders in Great Diddling to anyone who loves a good cozy mystery with well-developed characters. Katarina Bivald has once again proven herself to be a master storyteller, and I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next!

The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald follows the unusual but oh-so familiar lives of the villagers of Great Diddling in the wake of an explosion that ruins a tea party and kills the most hated man in the village. In trying to solve the murder, DCI Ahmed uncovers all the wriggling secrets buried deep in the quaint Cornish town of Great Diddling with a little help from Berit Gardner - the cynical Swedish novelist doing her best to navigating the limbo between book projects, while simultaneously dodging her agent's persistent attempts to get her to write.

The characters are the stars of the show: each and every one is beautifully fleshed out and none of them are anything like how they first appear. While Berit is lined up as the protagonist, this story is told from multiple points of view, giving depth and gravity to the unexpected actions of each character. Whether it's Daphne with her extensive book collection, Mary and Eleanor with their little cafe, or Simu with her political ambitions, it's hard not to grow attached to this colourful cast of characters, and easier still to fall for their ruses.

With its strong theme of stories this book can feel a little meta at times, but bookworms will feel right at home in Daphne's enormous library, Berit's inner writing monologue, and the village's impromptu book festival. This story nails the cosy components you would expect from a story set in a teeny Cornish village but doesn't hesitate to sneak up and hamstring you with plot twists when you least expect them (as all good murder mysteries should).

The main issue with this book is its soggy middle section which was a struggle to get through. Suspense and intrigue are vital parts of any murder mystery, and 50-100 pages of unnecessary information and confusing red herrings could easily have been shaved off to keep the suspense taut throughout.

Overall, this story is an endearing mystery that keeps you guessing and chuckling and desperate for a cup of tea and slice of cake.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this eARC!

The Murders of Great Diddling - Katarina Bivald

The villagers of Great Diddling have gathered at Tawny Hall for a tea party thrown by its owner, Daphne Trent. Berit Gardner, an author who has recently moved to the village, is unsettled by the tension surrounding the tea party, seeming to center on Daphne’s nephew, Reginald. Berit discovers that Reginald has threatened to close down the village shops, and has embroiled the hotel owner into a shady contract. All her fears are merited, as a small bomb goes off in the house, killing Reginald.

The village is thrown into chaos, as multiple people are considered as suspects, and other want to take advantage of a high-profile murder to bring tourists to town. Berit decides she will solve this murder, but every clue she turns up muddies the waters until she isn’t sure it will ever clear up. We follow as Berit, along with London detective Ian Ahmed, try to discover the murderer, while also watching the village being turned on its head, as the town council has decided to capitalize on the publicity and hold a Book and Murder festival in just two weeks.

This was such a fun book! I loved the characterization of all the eccentric villagers, including petty criminals, nosy neighbors, con artists, disgraced politicians, and the wealthy patron of the village who is obsessed with her book collection. The author did a great job showcasing the everyday village life alongside a murder investigation, so it never dragged, but I also really felt like a part of the town. The twists and turns kept me guessing the whole time, and I only figured out the murderer as the characters did. I also love a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and this fit the bill!

This book was The Thursday Murder Club-meets-The Patron Saint of Second Chances-meets-Murder She Wrote, and I would highly recommend it! Mark you calendars for August 13th when The Murders of Great Diddling publishes, as this is one you won’t want to miss!