Paul Magrs
Headline Review
Brenda
has had a long and eventful life and she has come to Whitby to run a
B&B in search of some peace and quiet. She and her best friend Effie
like nothing better than going out for tea at the Walrus and the
Carpenter or dinner at Cod Almighty and keeping their eyes open for any
of the mysterious goings on in town. And what with satanic beauty
salons, more than illegal aliens, roving psychic investigators and the
frankly terrifying owner of the Christmas Hotel there are no shortage of
nefarious shenanigans to keep them interested. But the oddest thing in
Whitby may well be Brenda herself. With her terrible scars, her strange
lack of a surname or the fact that she takes two different shoe sizes,
Brenda should have known that people as, well, unique as she is, just
aren't destined for a quiet life.
Magrs
(pronounced Mars) is a Doctor Who writer (amongst other things) and it
really shows as this whole book has a lightness and playfulness about it
that made it compulsive reading with ideas straight out of the ‘Who’
grab-bag.
The (not a) Bride of the title is named
Brenda and is the owner of a B&B in Whitby who, along with her
neighbour, junk shop proprietor Effie, investigates strange goings
on in her strange little town. Brenda’s true identity becomes evident
very early on in the proceedings and she is slowly revealed to have been
‘guided’ to Whitby to become the guardian of the place against the
portal to Hell opened there.
Magrs makes use of War of
the Worlds, Most Haunted (one of the most shameful programmes ever to appear on UK
television) and Whitby’s most famous visitor and weaves them into the tapestry of Brenda’s world to produce a joyful, rollicking read full of good, old fashioned, unadulterated fun.
Buy it here - Never the Bride (The Brenda and Effie Mysteries Book 1)
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