What a fun, amusing Kiwi crime mystery! Gareth and Louise Ward’s The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone is a humorous, entertaining firecracker of a book with an incredible selection of eclectic and lively characters. With a cosy small-town vibe, a cold case demanding answers, a dark secret hidden in the shadows, and a lovely doggo named Stevie, how could you resist this novel?

When a mystery parcel arrives at Sherlock Tomes bookshop, ex-cops Garth and Eloise (and their petrified pooch, Stevie) are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl. The two are soon tangled in a web of crime, drugs, and floral decapitations, while endeavouring to pull off the international celebrity book launch of the century. With their beloved shop on the chopping block and the sinister suspect who forced them to run away from Blighty reemerging from the shadows, have Garth and Eloise Sherlock finally met their Moriarty?

First, let’s start with the setting – and I don’t mean the picturesque Havelock North, though that is as lovely a location for such a novel. I mean Sherlock Tomes, the bookstore I wish I could visit in real life. Fortunately, Gareth and Louise are real-life owners of their own bookstore, Wardini Books, with shops in Napier and Havelock North. Oh, to be able to walk through the doors of such an inspiring establishment. But back to Sherlock Tomes. Any novel set primarily in a bookstore immediately gains a point in my mind as the themes of comfort, community and wonderful creativity set up the foundations of a great many character developments and explorations. You can learn a lot about a person by the books they read, right?

The writing style is witty and fun, with dual perspectives running alongside each other, creating great opportunities for the mystery to slowly unravel and for suspense to seep into the readers head and heart. You know a mystery is doing something right when the suspense slowly fills you with a need to learn more, discover more, and get to those moments where there is a release of pent-up tension. There are several moments where I verbally reacted to the cliffhangers and monologues – and of course, anything to do with Stevie.

For any non-New Zealanders interested in this book, I will answer you one thing. Yes, the characters you see are fairly accurate descriptions of the kinds of people you find in New Zealand, especially in Hawkes Bay. They are quirky and eccentric and often their personalities manifest in very visual ways, and that’s not a bad thing at all. New Zealand is a very diverse place, and hopefully we see more characters representing the variety of individuals here in Aotearoa. I know that if this book were to be set in Auckland we would see a similar but slightly altered set of characters, but all would display their creativity and essence in some visual capacity.

I highly recommend The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone to all mystery readers, including those new to the genre, as well as those wanting a cosy afternoon read. It’s a fantastic book that evokes many warm feels and the narrative voices are easygoing and fun to listen to. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next instalment, and you can guarantee you’ll see it here when it is released.