Not my go-to genre, but thoroughly enjoyable in a classic British mystery movie way. A little heavy on the dramatis personae and familial connections, it still manages to entertain. ( )

After struggling through almost half the book I finally gave up. The basic premise of using real characters around a fictional plot set in a real location, Portmeiron is worthwhile. The problem is the author has created so many characters to populate the plot, I found keeping tabs on them and their relationship to each other impossible, especially if there is a gap in reading sessions. ( )

What happened to this series? It started off so well! ( )

I love the mysteries Josephine Tey wrote, so I embraced this series. It has not always been easy. Thank goodness this books focus is on her good friend and inspiration for her famous detective Richard Grant, Archie Penrose. In this they have gone on holiday to celebrate Josephine's 40th birthday and entertain an offer from Alfred Hitchcock about optioning her latest book to make a film (this really occurred and she was not very happy with the results). Of course a murder occurs, but in this outing, Josephine is too involved in romantic and professional entanglements and it's Archie who finds himself haunted by the case for several reasons. Since Archie is such good company and a good storyteller, I don't mind a bit spending this book with him. ( )

This was a very gripping mystery. It takes place at Portmeirion which was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis in the style of an Italian village. The location was just the right place for the Hitchcocks to have a meet-up with their staff but also for a group to celebrate a birthday party. Whereas Mr Hitchcock thought to make this weekend unforgettable due to some special events and playing with the psyche of the attendees, members of his staff had only revenge in their minds. Nobody knew that they were related to each other and were the previous owners of this location.
There were such a lot of twists and turns that it let me guess a very long time how all incidents were coming together and how they were realated to each other. ( )