The Filey Connection

Sanford Third Age Club Mystery #1

by David W. Robinson

It’s summertime, and the Sanford 3rd Age Club are living it up in the seaside town of Filey. But the hot months don’t pass without problems for amateur sleuth, Joe Murray. Was Nicola Leach’s death an accident or deliberate? Did Eddie Dobson fall into the sea or did he jump? What’s going on behind the innocent façade – and closed doors – of the Beachside Hotel? And who raided Joe’s room? Joe and his sidekicks must find the answers to solve the mystery of The Filey Connection.


Now complete the collection. Grab the full, bestselling STAC

THE FILEY CONNECTION
THE I-SPY MURDERS
A HALLOWEEN HOMICIDE
A MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS
MURDER AT THE MURDER MYSTERY WEEKEND
MY DEADLY VALENTINE
THE CHOCOLATE EGG MURDERS
THE SUMMER WEDDING MURDER
** NEW ** COSTA DEL MURDER

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Cozy, Cozy Mystery

224 pages, ebook

First published May 8, 2011

About the author

A retired hypnotherapist and adult education teacher with a one-megaton sense of humour, David Robinson is a Yorkshireman from the outskirts of Manchester, northwest England, where he lives with his wife and a crazy Jack Russell Terrier named Joe (because he looks like a Joe).

He writes in several genres under different pseudonyms, but his mainstay is crime and mystery. He published several novels with different publishers until, in 2011, he turned to self-publishing on the Kindle, putting out 15 titles. In January 2012 Crooked Cat Publishing picked up the first of his popular Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, The Filey Connection. More titles in the series are due in the near future.

He also produces darker, edgier thrillers, such as The Handshaker and Voices; titles which are aimed exclusively at an adult audience and which question the perceptions of reality.

In a more light-hearted mood again, he turns out the occasional sci-fi or paranormal adventure and he has also published some non-fiction.

As at March, 2012, he is working on more of the Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries and a sequel to The Handshaker.

Website and blog http://www.dwrob.com
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/davidrobinso...
Twitter handle: @DW96

Reviews

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Filey Connection is set in the fictional town of Sanford, West Yorkshire, and follows the adventures of Joe (who runs the Sanford Third Age Club), and his two employee/friends, Sheila and Brenda. The tale kicks off with a murder, always a good way to start crime novel, and Joe (an amateur sleuth) is on the case from the word go because the victim is a member of STAC.

The Sanford Third Age Club set off for a weekend in Filey and the mystery deepens as another club member disappears, believed to have committed suicide, but Joe doesn't believe the evidence and sets out to prove the missing man has been murdered.

Without including any spoilers, it's impossible to write more, other than to say this is a cosy crime story, with lots of humour and witty repartee between Joe, Sheila and Brenda.

If I had a fault to find it would be the author's insistence on telling us how great Joe is at being a sleuth, instead of leaving us to make up our own minds. In fact, it would be easier to believe in his powers if they had been mentioned just a little less often. But that is a minor gripe and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of this delightful tale.

[Laurie Clayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Murray is the owner of the Lazy Luncheonette in the fictional Yorkshire town of Sanford. A self-confessed grumpy old sod, with pockets deeper than his short arms can reach and a mild case of `duck's arse disease', Joe has developed a reputation as a successful amateur detective.

Together with his closest friends and colleagues, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump, Joe is also the chairman of The Sanford Third Age Club... where the more mature population of Sanford can enjoy growing old disgracefully.

On the run up to The Sanford Third Age Club's weekend trip to Filey, one of their more colourful members becomes the victim of a hit and run with fatal results. Given the circumstances, the police believe that this is just an unfortunate accident. Joe disagrees. There is something about the event that just doesn't sit right, if only he could put his finger on it.

When the newest member of the merry band, Eddie Dobson also disappears during a fishing trip whilst in Filey, the inevitable police investigation follows. Once again, the police seem intent on this being an unfortunate accident. Initial suggestions indicate that Eddie may have fallen into the sea and been carried away by the currents. Joe and his companions think otherwise. Did Eddie fall as suggested?

David W Robinson has created some wonderfully real characters, situations and relationships that work effortlessly with each other. Joe Murray would give Scrooge a run for his money whilst Brenda and Sheila have their own endearing qualities that make them the perfect Roses to his Thorn. A good mix of references to the 70's music scene will strike a nostalgic note with many forty-something's and as usual, a good dose of northern humour to give your chuckle muscles a gentle workout.

The plot moves at an easy and realistic pace, with plenty of clues and red herrings to keep you guessing about the outcome. And just what is `The Filey Connection'?

Sorry, I could tell you, but then you would miss an enjoyable, cosy murder mystery, where the main characters endear themselves to you like long lost friends. Now, that really would be a crime.

Enjoy the read.

[Jude · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not my sort of thing. Boring repetitive, and I feel like I'm in danger of a smoking related disease after the description of every cigarette rolled and smoked

[John Bainbridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent mystery and great fun

So glad I tried this as I'm now hooked on a new series. I loved the characters of Joe and his two engaging side-kicks and the premise of the Sanford Third Age Club is a really good idea. Plenty of scope for new locations and great to read about my age group reliving our youth and still having fun. I really enjoyed the author's humour which is just right - witty, true to life, yet doesn't detract from a serious murder mystery. The plot is excellent, far less predictable than many. The well-evoked seaside setting is another bonus.

[Bridget Durell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Misogyny abounds

Good setting, but outdated views in this book. Particularly irritating hubris of the main male character. Grumpy, yes; funny, no. Misogynistic views and stereotypical female characters. Won't be reading any more of these.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can you get lung cancer from reading a book where every cigarette smoked is blatantly mentioned, along with its rolling and lighting with a Zippo lighter? Well, I certainly feel like it could happen to me after this story. Very occasionally it was necessary to the plot e.g. talking with someone on the terrace while smoking, but most of the time it felt like padding of a slim novel. Given how few people smoke nowadays, it was weirdly outdated too.
I did not like Joe Murray, the smoker, who was portrayed as a grumpy, bitter old man. His bad temper and caustic comments spoiled the book for me. I could not believe that the police would let him be so involved in an investigation and he never came over as fulfilling the tag of being a brilliant amateur detective.
The setup for the death was pretty convoluted too, and I lost the will to read the explanation thoroughly as I didn’t care why it had all happened.
And to think I actually paid for this rubbish!

[Miriam Drori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would describe this novel as the Agatha Christie type of cosy mystery with extra humour thrown in.
It has a couple of murders, an amateur sleuth, an intricate plot and a set of characters who, despite being well-rounded, are, for the most part, unaffected by the tragic occurrences.

Joe Murray turns out to be a worthy main character and sleuth. (I say that even though I was appalled by his excessive smoking.) He and his two female sidekicks form an interesting team, and also provide most of the humour.

I'll stop here before I inadvertently give something away. Enjoy.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I take three stars to mean a good book. It is , a bit annoying at times but ok. Its just the age group they are supposed to be seems more sixtys maybe its just it was written 2012 so its correct if you think that was 6 years ago? But easy read over a wet bank holiday.

[Michael D Keen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this one very much

The main characters took some time to grow on me, but once I felt a connection to them, the story really took off. I am definitely looking forward to the next book in this series.

[Lesley Hewitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good cozy mystery

The characters are down to earth normal people. Joe with a little input from Sheila and Brenda helps the police solve crimes. I can't wait to read the next book.

[sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

A trip

I got I spy to read and enjoyed it so much, I went back and got all of them. He's cantankerous and a tightwad but smart and quick. I really like the way Robinson writes.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

Started off slow but improved as the story went along. The character development was pretty good. I liked the book enough to read the next book in the series.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious and uninspiring. Only read a few chapters before giving up. Awful characters

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe owns a cafe and his two best friends work for him. The three also run the 3rd Age Club for older people. A weekend trip to a nearby coastal town has been organised, and all are looking forward to it until one of the club members is killed in a hit and run accident. Joe loves to solve mysteries and sinks his teeth into this one.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cosy kind of crime mystery story, The Filey Connection tells of the intrepid investigations of amateur sleuth Joe Murray, and his two friends, Sheila and Brenda, and is set in Sanford, a small fictional West Yorkshire town. Joe is the long-time owner of 'The Lazy Luncheonette', a popular cafe in the town, frequented by the locals and by staff from several nearby businesses. Joe keeps a very tight rein on all matters business and financial. He is also the chair of the 'Sanford Third Age Club', which provides entertainment and outings for the town's many elderly, divorced, widowed or otherwise lonely inhabitants over 50 years old, and it has over 300 members. Sheila and Brenda, who work for Joe at the cafe, are also secretary and treasurer of the club, respectively. They are both cheerful ladies, both widowed. It's summertime, and the next outing coming up for members is a long weekend away in the east coast seaside town of Filey, and everyone is looking forward to this. Joe is also 'a renowned amateur detective', and has been for many years. 'Puzzles and mysteries had been a joy to him since his childhood.' Along the walls of his cafe sit the many booklets he has written and typed up detailing the various puzzles and crimes that he has cracked over the years, for customers to peruse whilst enjoying their meal.

The novel starts off with a bang as a crime occurs in the prologue. The inhabitants of Sanford, and in particular the members of the 3rd Age Club, are shocked to hear that one of their number has been killed. Joe is immediately intrigued by the case, and starts to look for clues, taking the information the police have so far, which he has gathered from his niece, policewoman Gemma. He sees things that don't fit in how 'Knickers-off' Nicola, with a reputation for being rather loose with her affections, died. Meanwhile, a relative newcomer in town, Eddie Dobson, wants to join the trip to Filey at the last minute, and comes to see Joe about it. As the 3rd Age Club members descend on the Beachside Hotel, Filey, the mystery deepens, as another club member apparently loses their life. When DCI Terry Cummins, previously known to Joe, takes up the investigation, Joe confides in him all that he has learned so far and together they seek to wrap up the case.

Joe is a self-confessed 'shortarsed, crinkly-haired, bad-tempered old bugger', whose wife Alison left him 10 years ago. But he has built up a strong reputation in his hometown for the power and accuracy of his detective skills, '...before he was thirty, people from all over Sanford began to talk about this whizz-kid detective. Individuals and companies called him in to clear up mysteries and puzzles, and over the following decade, he established a reputation for the accuracy of his deductions.'

This is a gentle crime story, there is nothing exceptionally shocking or gruesome here, neither is the crime over complicated or incredibly intricate; rather it is a cosy mystery. There is plenty of banter between Joe, Sheila and Brenda as they mull over the happenings and try and unravel the clues and identify the guilty party. The writer has added some local dialect here and there amongst some of the Yorkshire folk but nothing that is difficult to comprehend. What is the Filey connection of the title? Well, the clues are there dotted in the story for the reader to spot. An easy to read, enjoyable murder mystery story with a clever but grumpy amateur detective.

[Nik Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series of cosy crime novels, this was a pleasure to read. If you’ve enjoyed Simon Brett’s half-dozen Mrs Pargeter novels, then you’ll like these too.

Joe Murray, 55, a ‘short-arsed, crinkly-haired, bad-tempered old bugger’ with ‘muscles in places where people don’t know they have places’ owns and runs the Lazy Luncheonette café with the help of stalwarts Sheila and Brenda.

Joe has a bit of a reputation for private detection and prides himself on his deductive powers. Which are called upon when one of the club members is killed by a hit-and-run motorist. He feels that it was not merely an accident. The sudden death puts a dampener on the club’s upcoming weekend trip to the Beachside Hotel in Filey, but it goes ahead anyway. No sooner do they get there than another club member meets an untimely end in the bay. He is convinced the deaths are connected.(The blurb reveals the identities of the two dead, which spoils it a little bit).

A whodunnit and a whydunnit, this is a quick read with plenty of chuckles along the way. Joe is acerbic yet likeable. Both Sheila and Brenda are great sounding boards for his theories and there’s plenty of repartee between them, inoffensive sarcasm and word-play. Coincidentally, Sheila is his age and could still ‘turn heads on a grab-a-granny nights, but they usually turned slower because most of their owners were in the deeper throes of arthritis.’ Where Sheila showed ‘tact and discretion in her daily life, both words had obviously been left out of Brenda’s lexicon.’

Robinson displays an acute eye for observation, useful in an author and a detective: ‘they emerged onto a broad richly-carpeted corridor, their footsteps muffled in that curious silence that was the hallmark of hotel landings.’

Yes, Joe’s a curmudgeon, but his heart’s in the right place and his two sidekicks seem to love him despite his occasional rudeness; indeed, they give as good as they get. He’s a fine departure from the usual detective. As one character says, ‘As a detective, Mr Murray, you’re probably better off running a café. You notice everything, misinterpret too much and still come to the right conclusion.’ Don’t they all?

I look forward to reading the next eight books in due course!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Filey Connection by David W Robinson

I had a lot of fun reading this book! The characters all seem like people you’ve met at some time, so real in speech, or in nature. Joe, the amateur detective, is an irascible guy who comes across as a man glad to be unattached…but actually, I found he gravitates well, and often, to enjoying the company of his two female side-kicks. D. W. Robinson has a really neat turn of vernacular phrasing in The Filey Connection, humorous and wittily scathing, that made me want to read on to find out what was coming next! A crime committed immediately in the prologue plunges the reader straight into the mystery, the resolving of it through tenacious deduction. Hit and run, or murder? And then, was it a suicide? Or some other nefarious cause of the second death? The resolving of the deaths all takes place over a short few days. The seaside location for the 3rd Age Club, and the extended heatwave, lend and extra edge to the mystery-nothing rushed about the uncovering of the clues that lead to the perpetrators of the crime. There’s nothing gruesome or nasty about the deaths, they happen alongside the teasing wordplay between Joe and everyone he meets. I loved D.W. Robinson’s version of the ‘good cop versus bad cop’…except, of course, Joe wasn’t really a cop. I found it quite poignant that at five feet six Joe was too short to be recruited to the police, the regulation height lower limit being something that prevented quite a few people from joining the profession in former times. The interaction between Joe, his police friends, and the bad guys worked for me since as a non cop Joe could say things the official police detectives were unable to! I wouldn’t want to ever be on the drolly sharp end of Joe Murray’s tongue. I look forward to reading more of D.W. Robinson’s writing.

[Terena · Rating 5 out of 5]

The publishers of this book, Crooked Cat, came recommended from a friend, and I liked the sound of this one so downloaded it. This is the first in a series around the characters of an over 50's social club in a town called Sanford in West Yorkshire and Joe Murray the chairman of the club is something of an amateur detective, so it does help that his niece is actually in the police force!

This book centres on one of the club members being run down and killed a couple of days before the club is due to spend a long weekend in Filey, and another member takes her place at the last minute and during the weekend he is also mysteriously found dead! Joe and his friends Brenda and Sheila attempt to piece the whole mystery together, conveniently it helps that the investigating DCI is known to them as he worked in Sanford some years previously.

I loved this book, as it was set in Yorkshire, I identified with the descriptions of Sanford, and I liked the camaraderie of the characters. So I definitely want to read the others in the series, and also want to join the Sanford Third Age Club!

[Maureen Vincent-Northam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Filey Connection, being a crime mystery of the cosy variety is just up my street. The Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) – an assortment of middle-aged rockers, widows and divorcees – is run by cafe owner and amateur sleuth Joe Murray and his friends and colleagues, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump.

The book opens as Nicola Leach, a member of STAC, is the victim of a hit and run and Joe suspects foul play. Someone seems overly eager to join the club’s weekend outing to the seaside town of Filey and when one of the club members goes missing, Joe’s investigative antenna really starts to twitch.

When it appears that Eddie Dobson has also lost his life, DCI Terry Cummins is assigned to the case, and together with Joe’s observations and analytical mind – and several twists and turns – they eventually solve the mystery.

A very enjoyable read with a wealth of appealing characters.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one of the Sanford Third Age Club members appears to have committed suicide during a trip to Filey, amateur sleuth - the delightfully grumpy - Joe Murray, senses something more sinister might be afoot.

Aided by his trusty side kicks, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump, Joe puts all his investigative powers to the test in order to figure out just what really did happen.

The Filey Connection is a terrific little murder mystery, filled with enough twist and turns to keep even the most ardent of mystery readers turning the pages. The characters are engaging, beautifully written, and bounce off each other perfectly, and the story is littered with a dry humour that really does make the reader laugh out loud.

I tried to put the book down several times, but found myself constantly going back to it.

[Karen Broughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

solid gold, this was one of my first cozy mysteries i ever read, I stumbled across it whilst doing a random search on Amazon for 99p. usually I stick to more well known authors, so was a little hesitant, have to admit the price as well as the title won me over. I love the settings are of places close some am even familiar with. makes a nice change from far off exotic places. flew through it the first time, now re reading the series for the second time. there isn't many books/series I re read, especially with the stack of books I have waiting to read. . The characters are great fun, the chemistry between Joe, Brenda and Sheila is lively, love the easy banter between them all, the down to earth language is a nice change too. I carnt rate this book and the whole series enough. it's a fun, light entertaining read.

[Maureen Vincent-Northam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sanford Third Age Club are on a trip to Filey when one of their number, Eddie Roberts, disappears. When he's found dead, Joe Murray, the club's chairman, and his sidekicks, Sheila and Brenda, take it upon themselves to discover what happened.

A Death at the Seaside is a short book, ideal as a holiday read for anyone who loves whodunits or who are in need of a quick mystery fix. Good fun, packed with humour, clues and red herrings.

Available on Kindle
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or paperback
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[LLona Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a little stiff in places, and a little long-winded for my taste, but still a true mystery with amateur sleuthing by a likable protagonist. Joe owns a café and serves as leader in a social club. When not 1 but 2 of the club's members are killed at the beginning of the club's annual vacation trip, our Joe becomes like a dog with a bone, chewing on it until he comes up with the desired result.

[Susan Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read all the STAC books and really enjoyed them all, they are all light and short read.