What is Connie Berry reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Connie Berry, author of A Grave Deception: A Kate Hamilton Mystery.

Her entry begins:

Since I’ve finished the latest installments of all my current favorites—Richard Osman, Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Pearse, Ruth Ware, Robert Galbraith—I decided to indulge myself by reading—or rereading—crime novels written during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (the period between the two world wars). Guided by British crime writer and editor Martin Edwards, current president of the famous London Detection Club, I’ve enjoyed wonderful novels by E. C. R. Lorac (Fire in the Thatch, Death of an Author), Anthony Berkeley (Murder in the Basement), and a lesser-known author, Anthony Rolls (Family Matters). They were recommended by Edwards, who wrote introductions to them for their publication by the British Library Crime Classics. In my opinion, these novels hold up today as true puzzle pieces with plenty of clues, red herrings, and twists. They also provide a fascinating time-travel experience to life in rural England between the wars, which I love. The BLCC collection to date includes more than 130 titles, but I’ve stopped reading them for now so I don’t unconsciously begin imitating their style. I can do that.

Over the Christmas holidays, I’ll reread as I always do The Wind in the Willows and several of...[read on]

About A Grave Deception, from the publisher:

Antiques expert Kate Hamilton dives into the past to solve a fourteenth-century mystery with disturbing similarities to a modern-day murder in the sixth installment of the Kate Hamilton mystery series.

Kate Hamilton and her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, have settled into married life in Long Barston. When archaeologists excavating the ruins of a nearby plague village discover the miraculously preserved body of a fourteenth-century woman, Kate and her colleague, Ivor Tweedy, are asked to appraise the grave goods, including a valuable pearl. When tests reveal the woman was pregnant and murdered, the owner of the estate on which the body was found, an amateur historian, asks Kate to identify her and, if possible, her killer. Surprised, Kate agrees to try.

Meanwhile, tensions within the archaeological team erupt when the body of the lead archaeologist turns up at the dig site with fake pearls in his mouth and stomach. Then a third body is found in the excavations. Meanwhile, Kate’s husband Tom is tracking the movements of a killer of his own.

With the help of 700-year-old documents and the unpublished research of a deceased historian, Kate must piece together the past before the grave count reaches four.

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--Marshal Zeringue