Like many, I love a good old-fashioned murder! Yes - they can be very snobby and Murder Included is, in parts, probably the snobbiest entry in the genre that I've read to date, which may well be why it seems to be relatively unknown - just 40-odd copies here on LT, for example.

It's also brilliant! For me, it really is up there with Dorothy L Sayers' whodunits. Joanna Cannan is as erudite and talented as the great DLS and I warmly recommend this book to any Golden Age enthusiasts looking for 'new' authors to explore. ( )

I think I only bought this book because I was buying a number of the green Penguins (Cyril Hare etc.) from a bookseller a few years ago and this one was among them and I thought it would be cruel to separate these books which seemed to have belonged to the same person (not many of the old English Penguins available from used booksellers in Germany). At any rate, I'm glad I did and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. If you are looking for a light read with plenty of humour, you won't go wrong with this one:

In a fit of being sensible and wanting a good English upbringing for her daughter (who is of somewhat indeterminable age and a pure delight, even though I usually dislike children in fiction) Bunny has left her carefree life in France in order to marry Sir Charles d'Estray, a decision that causes her to recite "You've made your bed ..." every morning. Sir Charles has a draughty mansion and a family who frowns upon "French" habits (such as having breakfast in your bedroom), and his finances are a complete mess, causing Bunny to turn said mansion into a guesthouse. Unfortunately, one of the guests (and relatives) checks out rather prematurely, and as she wasn't the most pleasant person on god's green earth, the local police have their work cut out and decide to call in help from London. Naturally, the expert from London initially spends a lot of his time despairing over how things are done in the country before he gets around to doing some actual detecting and things are beginning to look bad for Bunny ...