Foul Play At The Seaview Hotel by Glenda Young

14 Sep Foul Play At The Seaview Hotel by Glenda Young

Posted at 07:38 in blogtour, Cosy Crime, Crime by Karen Byrom 0 Comments

All’s fair in love, war and crazy golf
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#Blogtour

Cosy crime is having a bit of a thing at the moment, with pensioners, gardeners, chefs and ecologists all starring as amateur sleuths. All are inadvertently caught up in crime, just like Glenda Young’s intrepid Scarborough landlady, Helen Dexter.

This is her third outing in a series that grows stronger with each book. As her snotty neighbour and rival hotel landlady Miriam says, “it’s unfortunate the way her guests keep getting murdered.”

The story opens with a group of keen crazy golfers arriving at the hotel prior to a grand tournament. Then the captain of their rival team also takes a room – and it soon becomes apparent that all the players have history with each other.

Helen struggles to keep the peace – but when a player dies in suspicious circumstances she has to save the reputation of her hotel once more by solving the mystery.

Along with that, she has her own problems to deal with. Her cook has walked out, her new love interest Jimmy is back from his latest Elvis impersonation tour and pushing her for commitment, and her friends are all behaving very oddly about her upcoming fiftieth birthday.

Humour contrasts with darkness

This was a solid cosy crime story – I just loved the premise that crazy golfers could be so motivated to murder! There is plenty humour in the narrative, but it stays just on the right side of darkness with the ever present sense of danger to at least one of Helen’s guest, to herself, and even to her beloved rescue greyhound Suki.

Author Glenda Young is honing her plotting skills and Helen is growing better as an amateur sleuth – less of the observer she was in the first story, that featured a bevy of Elvis’s, and far more proactive in digging out the truth.

As she says, a hotel landlady hears everything.

As well as solving crime, she’s perceptive about people’s personal problems and able to offer solutions, making her a very empathetic character. Though it would be nice to see her through other people’s eyes occasionally, she is a reliable narrator, and holds the story together well. You can rely on her version of events and join in with her on picking up the clues that lead to solving the mystery.

I enjoyed this story and I think the Seaview Hotel series is getting stronger with each murder mystery it hosts.

Next time we’re promised ballroom dancers taking some serious missteps. I can’t wait!

Cover of Foul Play At The Seaview Hotel shows Scarborough at night

Foul Play at the Seaview Hotel is published now by Accent Press in ebook

About the Author

Glenda Young credits her local library in the village of Ryhope, where she grew up, for giving her a love of books. She still lives close by in Sunderland and often gets her ideas for her stories on long bike rides along the coast. The novels are inspired by Glenda’s love of soap opera, and are dramatic with lots of action and wonderful female characters. There’s a lot of warmth and humour too. Glenda is also the creator of the first ever weekly soap opera, Riverside which appears in The People’s Friend.

Alongside her fun cosy crime series, Glenda writes gritty sagas set in the north-esat of England at the turn of the century

Visit her website glendayoungbooks.com here

Find her on Facebook @GlendaYoungAuthor

Follow her on X (Twitter) @flaming_nora

Find her on Tiktok @glenda_young_author