Philly Barker Investigates
Joanne Tracey
241 pages
Published September 28, 2022
🖼️🖼️🖼️🖼️🖼️
This is the first instalment in a cosy mystery series about a crime-fighting middle-aged antiques dealer. I don’t usually read this genre – it can be very formulaic, and the tendency to treat murder as a puzzle to be solved by a meddling amateur bothers me, but this is written by a good friend of my good friend – who recommended it – so I bought it to check it out and ended up thoroughly enjoying it.
Divorced ex-police officer Philomena Barker runs an antiques stall from a converted barn with her friends in quaint Yorkshire village called Chipwell. When burglars target a series of items sourced from the same estate sale, Philly and her new friend amiable DI Robbie Dawkins join forces to find out who is so desperate to locate the items concealed within them.
Warning – don’t read this when hungry, as all the delicious sounding baking will have you longing for sweet treats: I had never heard of Parkin, but there are recipes for it and other goodies at the end. I loved the wholesome cast of lovable characters featured here – I imagine the barn being something like the one in The Repair Shop on TV, where they’re all lovely, with a cute dog and masterful cat thrown in. There’s an intriguing mystery, a sad backstory, lots of interesting antiques and even a hint of romance. Philly is a great heroine – an Aussie expat who stayed in England for love, and maintains cordial relations with him even when he ditched her for a younger woman. She’s kind and generous but no pushover, and has a keen eye for a bargain when it comes to her chosen trade. I look forward to continuing the series. 4.5 rounded up for charming me out of my aversion to cosies!
Leave a Reply