Curtain Call at the Seaview Hotel: The stage is set when a killer strikes in this charming, Scarborough-set cosy crime mystery

Helen Dexter is the sole proprietor of the Seaview Hotel in Scarborough. She is bly aided and abetted by Jean, a no-nonsense Yorkshire woman who is in charge of the cooking and Sally, a young single Mum who does the cleaning and anything else which needs doing. The three are firm friends and together they prepare to face the trials and tribulations presented by an acting troupe who are moving into the hotel for a fortnight while rehearsing for a play which is to be staged at a local theatre. Things take a turn for the worse when one of them manages to get themselves murdered, most inconvenient as a Hotel Inspector is in the area and likely to turn up for a visit at any time.

As a novel, I really enjoyed this book. It is a very easy read and there are some great characters. The hotel incumbents (the trio of hotel stalwarts) are well developed and each has their own distinct character (not forgetting Suki, the resident greyhound) but the theatre troupe provided the author with an opportunity to give full rein to her imagination and they are certainly an eclectic bunch. This is the second in a series featuring the inimitable Helen Dexter, but it reads perfectly well as a stand-alone book.

As a crime novel however it’s not great and would have got a much lower star rating had it been marked purely on that basis - there are no clues and no deduction although it is definitely cosy. In fact the whole book is on the twee side, which is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea.

Whilst I would not necessarily search out other books by this author, I would happily read another one if it came my way. Not recommended for people who want their reading material to be deep and meaningful.

📚 Helen Dexter is a landlady for her B&B in Scarborough which she runs alongside her two good friends, Jean and Sally. A few days after a theatre group begin their stay at the hotel, one of the guest's bodies is found on the beach.

📚 I don't know if this book was about the murder, the hotel's 4th star, or Helen's beige love life. The extent of the character development is the materialisation of the word 'mug' on Helen's forehead.

📚 I enjoyed this book at the beginning, but became extremely bored around the 200 page mark. There was little development in plot between page 200 and 300 and the writing is very repetitive. This was a struggle to finish.

I am afraid I am not a fan of this book at all. There was a lot of seemingly irrelevant descriptive detail, and I found it all rather silly and tedious. I gave up a quarter of the way through.

I really found it a awful book.
By chapter 6 I nearly fell asleep as it was such boring plot that just went on and on with nothingness.
Its a wonder I managed to finish this book at all quite frankly.

This is a Helen Dexter Cosy Crime Mystery. It’s a light weight, easy read. The story is cliched in parts - vegans for some reason get ridiculed - and there are a lot of superfluous descriptions. The characters do a fair bit of bustling, cake eating and there is an odd Elvis impersonator love interest. There are also a few references to a previous Elvis themed murder, which must have happened in the first book of the cosy crime series. This isn’t a book I enjoyed but it may appeal to others. I would recommend it if you are perhaps looking for something light to read on holiday.