The Crime Warp

I have a new friend. An Essex girl of all people! Rosie Strange, the protagonist of the Essex Witch Museum Mysteries (Strange Sight is the second and I enjoyed it as much as the first, if not even more so). Rosie has the perfect attributes for being my friend: a good dose of self-awareness coupled by an equally strong dose of self-acceptance. Yet there is still plenty of scope for mystery.  Descending from a line of people with reputedly extra-sensory gifts, she is firmly rooted in scepticism. Working with (and perhaps having a crush on) Sam, the museum curator and investigator of the paranormal, forces her to confront uncomfortable phenomena, with even a gruesome murder thrown in. It would take more than that though, to shake an Essex girl, unless her blingy boots get scratched in the process or a manicured nail gets broken.  Do you believe in ghosts? Well, at the last Harrogate Crime Writers’ Festival, I attended a panel discussion on murder mysteries and crime fic...

As a ‘crimebibliophile’   (I just made that word up, catchy isn’t it?), I thought I was familiar with  just about every premise possible for a crime or mystery novel. That is until ‘Strange Magic’ landed on my bedside table. 'Strange Magic' is set in Essex (and don’t you dare allude to ‘Essex Girls’ or the main protagonist Rosie Strange will assault you, at least verbally. That is, if she can find time between her manis and pedis and her hunt for the bones of a witch, executed in the 16 th century during the height of the persecution of witches.) Rosie, a matter-of-fact sort of woman and benefit fraud investigator, inherits a witch museum from her estranged Granddaddy Septimus. Wanting to sell the place, Rosie visits the ramshackle museum where she encounters the dishy curator Sam Stone. Soon the two of them become embroiled in a sort of English road trip to chase after said bones, needed to save the life of a little boy.   And the plan to sell the museum slips int...