Well, it’s that time of the month again – time for me to highlight another novel in my long-running series of books recommended by Cozy Mystery readers. Today I’ll be writing about Death in Castle Dark, the first in the A Dinner and a Murder Mystery Series, which is another series written by Julia Buckley. Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where you might not immediately realize this by looking at the cover of the book, as she was writing here as Veronica Bond. Yes, we’re dealing with a long-running frustration of mine, an author with a much-less used pseudonym. I’ve already written two of this author’s series (the Hungarian Tea House Mystery Series and the Writer’s Apprentice Mystery Series) but, since this book was released under another name, many readers might not be aware of the existence of this short series – which would be a real shame, because I definitely enjoyed this outing as well.
Anyway! Enough about my little ‘pet peeve’ regarding pseudonyms.
As the novel begins, actress Nora Blake has just gotten a new job – working at Castle Dark, a murder mystery themed dinner event where customers spend the night enjoying both a good meal and attempt to solve an interesting ‘murder mystery’. The job isn’t ideal – the pay isn’t great, and Wood Glen is a bit more remote from Chicago than Nora would like, but it does come with room and board, which is certainly a strong incentive for a young actress without a steady job like Nora. However, she’s quickly sold on the job, which is certainly heavy on melodrama, but also flexes the cast’s improv skills. The naturally, the cast of the dinner all know each other well, but many of the customers are frequent repeat visitors as well.
Unsurprisingly, this being a Cozy, it doesn’t take long at the new job before something goes terribly wrong – a real murder occurs, as Nora discovers the very actually dead body of one of her actor colleagues during her second performance night. Naturally, despite the victim being generally well-liked, it turns out that there are plenty of people both in the cast and in the nearby town, who might have had reasons to want him gone.
One thing I particularly noted with particular eagerness was that a series of simple diagrams for the Castle Dark floor plans at the beginning of the book, complete with secret passages. For a reader such as myself who puts a high premium on the mystery of a Cozy, this is a really great way for an author to indicate that these sort of details will be important to the story – in other words, a lot of thought probably went into the mystery! As a fan of “classics” of the mystery genre from authors like Doyle and Christie, I really love this sort of thing.
All told, this is a great mystery that really focuses on the ‘mystery’ element. There are definitely plenty of flavor elements – the castle is a great classic sort of setting, the characters are all interesting, as well as discussions about the acting roles. However, it’s really the mystery that takes the star in Death in Castle Dark.
Deborah Coleman says
Love her previous works so glad for the heads up on the name “change” used! Look forward to reading it!
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Deborah, I hope you enjoy it!
Mrs. Ainee C. Beland says
This reads interestingly enough; a book to consider for my TBR shelf; I hope I can remember the author’s name; as there are several pseudonyms. A pun when not needed.
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Ainee, I hope you enjoy this one, if you do end up picking it up!
MJ says
I also enjoyed both of the books in this series. I really was looking forward to the third book, but it’s unlikely there’ll be another book.
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A ‘confusing’ issue 🙁 …………
I looked up the bio of both Veronica Bond and Julia Buckley and found a huge discrepancy. However, at Julia Buckley’s website it does list her books written under the name of Veronica Bond.
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Veronica Bond is a Certified Life Coach, Licensed and Registered Dietary Nutritionist and certified fitness instructor. She lives in Washington State with her husband and 2.5 children.
Join her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorveronicabond
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Julia Buckley
Julia Buckley is a Chicago-area writer. Her first mystery, The Dark Backward, was published in 2006; since then she has sold a cozy mystery series about title character Madeline Mann (now available on Kindle).
Buckley is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Romance Writers of America. She blogs about writing and mysteries at Mysterious Musings, Poe’s Deadly Daughters, and Inkspot.
She teaches high school English and enjoys reading, playing Lexulous on Facebook, and spending time with her husband and two sons.
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I believe there are TWO authors with the name “Veronica Bond”
Pseudonyms are bad enough, but why use another author’s name?
Here’s the Amazon link to the ‘other Veronica Bond”
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Veronica-Bond/author/B00KLRGFWY?fbclid=IwY2xjawE2JFVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbTUXrUXY91JNyu0Tj19hSu8-35ziO7xaCD5ZMzTaPUP1XsWT6DZrgbgkw_aem_hE2pE622yceCxP3vo4WpsA&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Danna - cozy mystery list says
MJ, I don’t know why this wasn’t showing up as normal for ‘pre-posting’ – I hadn’t posted it yet (this has been a weird month for me in terms of free time…). That said, I would think it would still have shown up as normal for a ‘to-be-posted’ comment.
As for the Veronica Bond(s) issue… it’s certainly odd. I would assume that whoever selected the pseudonym (whether Julia Buckley, her publisher, or whoever else) may not have noticed this other “Veronica Bond”… or just didn’t care. It’s perplexing, but making authors switch up names like this is always baffling to me. I would normally assume it’s a decree upon switching publishers, but a quick check indicates these are all under the same publisher as well.
Mary Tederstrom says
Just curious why you say it is unlikely that there will be a third book? I read the first two (I enjoyed them fairly well, but hadn’t really considered yet whether I would read a third). Did I miss something about there only be two books planned in the series?
Kathie says
Sounds exciting. I always love your posts and I enjoy reading the books you suggest. They are always spot on.
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Kathie, I hope you enjoy this one as well!