Strange Tombs by Syd Moore, Book Review

My sister and I get on really well, in fact terrifically well. We never fight over anything, with one exception: The latest Essex Witch Museum Mystery. As I’m writing this review (and not her), you can tell that I got to read the book first, ha.

As always, Syd Moore is highly entertaining. Her charming and witty protagonist Rosie Strange is my favourite Essex girl and I adore her, even though we are worlds apart. Unlike Rosie, I don’t queue for manis and pedis, or fashionable clothes and I don’t travel with lots of make-up and hair kit. But like Rosie, I have a decent dose of common sense mixed with an innate curiosity.

Now that she and her colleague (and dare I say future lover?) Sam Stone are on the radar of MI5, they have been tasked to investigate strange happenings at a country house writer’s course. I won’t spoil the story, but I can say that Strange Tombs makes a nod to Agatha Christie and the country house classics where people are drinking cocktails in the drawing room one moment and are discovered dead as a door nail the next. But in this case, which involves medieval knights, scary specters and howling creatures, I can assure you it’s not the butler.

The author Syd Moore is a lecturer and former presenter of Channel 4's book programme, Pulp. She is also the editor of Level 4, a magazine for arts and culture. Apart from being interested in the history of witchcraft, Syd is a founding member of the Essex Girls Liberation Front which aims to change the definition and stereotype of an Essex Girl. Good luck with that :) 

Strange Tombs was first published by Point Blank in paperback (£8.99) in May 2019. This is the fourth in the series.