Murder in the Village (A Belinda Penshurst Mystery Book 1)

Murder in the Village is the first book in a new English village cozy series by Lisa Cutts. Due out 25th Aug 2021, it's 286 pages and will be available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.

This was a good series start with a solid small village cozy. The author is a technically adept writer and provides necessary backstory without info-dumping. The narrative is lighthearted, including an ensemble cast of oddball small-town characters.

There are some fairly silly and over the top developments and plot twists (including a murder involving cling film), but it's a village cozy, so it's really part of the whimsy. The "over the top" characters and dialogue were always on the right side of charming and didn't shade over into annoying or yank me out of my suspension of disbelief, so it was a fun read.  There's also an almost slow-burn on/off romance subplot with the handsome former detective who's new to the village, again par for the course.  The language is clean, the murder(s) are off screen and free from gory violence, there's no direct graphic sexual content; it's a well written and charming cozy. The plot threads include dog-napping, light blackmail, extortion, and murder, and amateur sleuth Belinda, castle-dwelling, clever, and single minded, is determined to get to the bottom of the skullduggery infesting *her* village.

The audiobook version is very well narrated by Lucy Paterson and has a run time of 7 hours 31 minutes. She has an impressive facility with different local accents and they come across clearly in her dialogue recitation between two or more characters (of both sexes). One of the characters she narrated was an older resident in the village and she was perfectly convincing portraying the stressed and crying septuagenarian. 

Charming, diverting, and well written. I intend to seek out future volumes in the series. Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes