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A Dark Death
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 8, 2025
A lively cozy mystery featuring the colorful cast of characters introduced in the first Meredith Island mystery, “Secrets in the Water”, also reviewed by this reader.
The series is set amidst a charming Welsh remote island inhabited by a tight knit community, including Kate Galway, a retired teacher and present-day historical novelist who has returned from the mainland back to island life and is something of a busybody, (when it comes to solving crimes, at least), along with her best friend, the red-headed (and hot-blooded) artist Siobhan Fitzgerald.
Without giving the plot away, (no spoilers here), there are murders afoot as a number of new folks converge on the island including: a villainous “psychic” and his perhaps-more-authentic sidekick; and a loser-ish Archeology professor and five of his young (and not so studious) students.
As the mystery (and the body count) deepens, Kate attempts to influence and manipulate her former student, the handsome Constable Bryon Finch, — he of the chiseled cheekbones and propensity to blush (when flirted with by the lovely Siobhan) — as she works her way into full crime-busting mode, with twists and turns as the lies pile up, secrets unravel, and an ending is finally revealed, (and one that does not disappoint).
An engaging mystery with an unusual and evocative setting, this is a cosy to cuddle up with, a cup of tea in hand, with a puzzle to solve, and a whole slew of characters to consult, one (or two) of which must, in fact, be a murderer.
A great big thank you to the author, the publisher and @river_street_writes for an ARC of this book. All thoughts provided are my own.
The series is set amidst a charming Welsh remote island inhabited by a tight knit community, including Kate Galway, a retired teacher and present-day historical novelist who has returned from the mainland back to island life and is something of a busybody, (when it comes to solving crimes, at least), along with her best friend, the red-headed (and hot-blooded) artist Siobhan Fitzgerald.
Without giving the plot away, (no spoilers here), there are murders afoot as a number of new folks converge on the island including: a villainous “psychic” and his perhaps-more-authentic sidekick; and a loser-ish Archeology professor and five of his young (and not so studious) students.
As the mystery (and the body count) deepens, Kate attempts to influence and manipulate her former student, the handsome Constable Bryon Finch, — he of the chiseled cheekbones and propensity to blush (when flirted with by the lovely Siobhan) — as she works her way into full crime-busting mode, with twists and turns as the lies pile up, secrets unravel, and an ending is finally revealed, (and one that does not disappoint).
An engaging mystery with an unusual and evocative setting, this is a cosy to cuddle up with, a cup of tea in hand, with a puzzle to solve, and a whole slew of characters to consult, one (or two) of which must, in fact, be a murderer.
A great big thank you to the author, the publisher and @river_street_writes for an ARC of this book. All thoughts provided are my own.
April 29, 2026
3.5 Add this to your comfort reads. A good story that demands nothing more than a comfy couch and a cup of coffee.
January 31, 2025
Fitzpatrick, Alice. A Dark Death. (Stonehouse Publishing, 2025)
(NOTE: I received an ARC of this book from River Street Writing.)
A Dark Death by Alice Fitzpatrick, is the second in the Meredith Island mystery series. Although it makes reference to the events of the previous book, it reads just fine on its own.
Archaeology professor Simon Penhaligon is leading a group of students on a dig on the far side of the island. One morning, they arrive at the site to discover the body of a mainland film producer and self-professed psychic, Griffin Blackstock. On the island to film a séance for a TV series he’s working on, he has been murdered and his naked body laid out in almost ceremonial fashion at the dig site.
The professor, his students, and pretty much everyone else on the island immediately become suspects as the police try to solve the murder, aided by mystery-writer-turned-amateur-sleuth Kate Galway, who with her friend Siobhan, bulls her way into the investigation.
Things get complicated very quickly. Blackstock turns out to be not just a fraud and a shyster, but an abusive womanizer known for secretly filming his sexual encounters. In fact, he’s generally a prick, and the consensus among those who knew him was that he got what he deserved.
There’s also the mysterious matter of Blackstock’s apartment, which was burglarized and torched on the day of the murder. The obvious conclusion is that whoever did it was looking for something and, being unable to find it, had lit a fire to destroy it. Clearly there’s a connection to the murder, which means that whoever the killer was, he or she had accomplices.
The problem is, there are a surprising number of people on the island who have had past dealings with him, some of which they’d prefer didn't come out. This includes Kate’s godson, Tristan, one of the students, who is the son of her best friend from university. As the police investigation (and Kate’s parallel, unsanctioned, inquiries) go forward, we are presented with several candidates for the role of murderer. Things become even more complicated when one of the students, Noah, is also murdered, pushed off a cliff by an unknown assailant.
I enjoyed this. It was fairly light, in an interesting locale and with engaging characters. I felt like the writing started off a bit choppy, although part of this is that I cannot abide the past perfect voice (She had been living in London then, and had been going to university where she had known several people who had all had very nice hair….”) Maybe this is a failing on my part rather than the actual writing! But it pushes me out of the story and makes it hard to keep reading.
Anyway, it gets better. As these things usually do, the murderer (or murderers) are eventually revealed, thanks mostly to the inquisitiveness and insights of Kate Galway. It’s a bit of a slow start, but picks up and moves along very nicely for the last two-thirds. Fitzpatrick throws in several nice twists before we get to where we’re going, and there’s an undercurrent of nastiness, just enough to keep things a wee bit on the spicy side.
There were a couple red herrings that I felt didn’t really work, and while I had not guessed the identity of the murderer(s) it was pretty clear to me from the start that they were going to be part of the solution. The resolution, where all the parts come together and the guilty confess, felt a bit forced, but not so much I can’t live with it.
Some spoilers follow:
There were some very specific things that I thought weakened the story. For example, the matter of a laptop belonging to one of the suspects which was stolen from police custody. The theft immediately put increased suspicion on the suspect, until Kate points out what everyone is thinking, that it would be pretty damned stupid for him to have taken only his own laptop from among all the other evidence stored by the police. (Also, similarly stupid of them to handle evidence so cavalierly, but I digress). We never do find out how it was stolen or by who. The whole matter is just dropped, and to me it felt like something that served no particular purpose and should have been cut.
A more serious flaw was the subplot regarding the mysterious injuries to the Reverend Imogen Larkin, the local vicar. Skeptical of Blackstock’s claims, she leaves the room during part of the séance and is standing on the darkened stairway landing when she’s seemingly attacked by someone – or something – which tried to strangle her.
This whole thing makes no sense at all, and was as far as I could tell completely unrelated to the main story. We know she’s not making it up—the bruises on her neck are real. Who did it? The obvious conclusion is that there was someone hiding there, or that it was part of Blackstock’s set up. But no, the skeptical Rev. Larkin immediately leaps to the conclusion that it was the work of some malevolent, spectral force. Since this runs counter to her concept of a loving God, she immediately embarks on a crisis of faith that quite frankly looks a lot like a mental breakdown.
Much later, we learn with certainty that what we suspected from the start is true: the séance was completely faked. Except for the apparent attack on the Reverend, which I guess was some kind of psychic manifestation, possibly related to her lingering feelings of guilt over a parishioner who many years before had hanged herself?
Similarly, at the very end, we learn that Blackstock’s assistant, Willow, really *is* a psychic, able to contact the dead, which she does in order to reassure the old lady in whose house the séance was that her two deceased sisters really are happy and together in the afterlife. This is explained in the last chapter, sort of an epilogue, and the whole thing comes straight out of left field. It’s as if the author decided at the last minute that this needed to also be a supernatural thriller, wrote up a few scenes unrelated to the story and tacked them in. This and the Reverend Larkin subplot fit so poorly with the rest of the story that in my mind I’ve actually edited them out of it. Maybe there’s something I simply missed? If I have, I invite someone to explain it to me.
(NOTE: I received an ARC of this book from River Street Writing.)
A Dark Death by Alice Fitzpatrick, is the second in the Meredith Island mystery series. Although it makes reference to the events of the previous book, it reads just fine on its own.
Archaeology professor Simon Penhaligon is leading a group of students on a dig on the far side of the island. One morning, they arrive at the site to discover the body of a mainland film producer and self-professed psychic, Griffin Blackstock. On the island to film a séance for a TV series he’s working on, he has been murdered and his naked body laid out in almost ceremonial fashion at the dig site.
The professor, his students, and pretty much everyone else on the island immediately become suspects as the police try to solve the murder, aided by mystery-writer-turned-amateur-sleuth Kate Galway, who with her friend Siobhan, bulls her way into the investigation.
Things get complicated very quickly. Blackstock turns out to be not just a fraud and a shyster, but an abusive womanizer known for secretly filming his sexual encounters. In fact, he’s generally a prick, and the consensus among those who knew him was that he got what he deserved.
There’s also the mysterious matter of Blackstock’s apartment, which was burglarized and torched on the day of the murder. The obvious conclusion is that whoever did it was looking for something and, being unable to find it, had lit a fire to destroy it. Clearly there’s a connection to the murder, which means that whoever the killer was, he or she had accomplices.
The problem is, there are a surprising number of people on the island who have had past dealings with him, some of which they’d prefer didn't come out. This includes Kate’s godson, Tristan, one of the students, who is the son of her best friend from university. As the police investigation (and Kate’s parallel, unsanctioned, inquiries) go forward, we are presented with several candidates for the role of murderer. Things become even more complicated when one of the students, Noah, is also murdered, pushed off a cliff by an unknown assailant.
I enjoyed this. It was fairly light, in an interesting locale and with engaging characters. I felt like the writing started off a bit choppy, although part of this is that I cannot abide the past perfect voice (She had been living in London then, and had been going to university where she had known several people who had all had very nice hair….”) Maybe this is a failing on my part rather than the actual writing! But it pushes me out of the story and makes it hard to keep reading.
Anyway, it gets better. As these things usually do, the murderer (or murderers) are eventually revealed, thanks mostly to the inquisitiveness and insights of Kate Galway. It’s a bit of a slow start, but picks up and moves along very nicely for the last two-thirds. Fitzpatrick throws in several nice twists before we get to where we’re going, and there’s an undercurrent of nastiness, just enough to keep things a wee bit on the spicy side.
There were a couple red herrings that I felt didn’t really work, and while I had not guessed the identity of the murderer(s) it was pretty clear to me from the start that they were going to be part of the solution. The resolution, where all the parts come together and the guilty confess, felt a bit forced, but not so much I can’t live with it.
Some spoilers follow:
There were some very specific things that I thought weakened the story. For example, the matter of a laptop belonging to one of the suspects which was stolen from police custody. The theft immediately put increased suspicion on the suspect, until Kate points out what everyone is thinking, that it would be pretty damned stupid for him to have taken only his own laptop from among all the other evidence stored by the police. (Also, similarly stupid of them to handle evidence so cavalierly, but I digress). We never do find out how it was stolen or by who. The whole matter is just dropped, and to me it felt like something that served no particular purpose and should have been cut.
A more serious flaw was the subplot regarding the mysterious injuries to the Reverend Imogen Larkin, the local vicar. Skeptical of Blackstock’s claims, she leaves the room during part of the séance and is standing on the darkened stairway landing when she’s seemingly attacked by someone – or something – which tried to strangle her.
This whole thing makes no sense at all, and was as far as I could tell completely unrelated to the main story. We know she’s not making it up—the bruises on her neck are real. Who did it? The obvious conclusion is that there was someone hiding there, or that it was part of Blackstock’s set up. But no, the skeptical Rev. Larkin immediately leaps to the conclusion that it was the work of some malevolent, spectral force. Since this runs counter to her concept of a loving God, she immediately embarks on a crisis of faith that quite frankly looks a lot like a mental breakdown.
Much later, we learn with certainty that what we suspected from the start is true: the séance was completely faked. Except for the apparent attack on the Reverend, which I guess was some kind of psychic manifestation, possibly related to her lingering feelings of guilt over a parishioner who many years before had hanged herself?
Similarly, at the very end, we learn that Blackstock’s assistant, Willow, really *is* a psychic, able to contact the dead, which she does in order to reassure the old lady in whose house the séance was that her two deceased sisters really are happy and together in the afterlife. This is explained in the last chapter, sort of an epilogue, and the whole thing comes straight out of left field. It’s as if the author decided at the last minute that this needed to also be a supernatural thriller, wrote up a few scenes unrelated to the story and tacked them in. This and the Reverend Larkin subplot fit so poorly with the rest of the story that in my mind I’ve actually edited them out of it. Maybe there’s something I simply missed? If I have, I invite someone to explain it to me.
April 30, 2026
If you want to understand what it means when they say, cosy mystery, A Dark Death is definitively this: a book that you could read by a fire in a little stone cottage (or in my case, under a duvet, while the rain pelts the windows).
Kate Galway is a prefect middle-aged meddler, an historical fiction writer, who knows a thing or two about human behaviour.
In A Dark Death, the second in the Meredith Island Mysteries, a fraudster psychic is murdered and laid naked in an archaeological dig (a fake one) where students and academics have been gathering to examine their findings.
Griffin Blackstock isn’t the only person murdered, and while we’re taken on a murder mystery adventure with Kate and her friend Siobhan, we meet a slew of other characters, who are all in some manner or another carrying around a burdensome past.
Alice Fitzpatrick does a great job of giving us a literary version of one of those amazing little mysteries on the BBC and in fact Kate Galway could do with her own television show because the scenery and little town setting really comes alive in the writing and all the characters enhance the mixed feelings of island living where you’re either confined by it or protected by its smallness.
5 stars because this book does exactly what it's supposed to do: lulls you into a cosy little murder!
Kate Galway is a prefect middle-aged meddler, an historical fiction writer, who knows a thing or two about human behaviour.
In A Dark Death, the second in the Meredith Island Mysteries, a fraudster psychic is murdered and laid naked in an archaeological dig (a fake one) where students and academics have been gathering to examine their findings.
Griffin Blackstock isn’t the only person murdered, and while we’re taken on a murder mystery adventure with Kate and her friend Siobhan, we meet a slew of other characters, who are all in some manner or another carrying around a burdensome past.
Alice Fitzpatrick does a great job of giving us a literary version of one of those amazing little mysteries on the BBC and in fact Kate Galway could do with her own television show because the scenery and little town setting really comes alive in the writing and all the characters enhance the mixed feelings of island living where you’re either confined by it or protected by its smallness.
5 stars because this book does exactly what it's supposed to do: lulls you into a cosy little murder!
January 19, 2026
I received this book free from Stonehouse Publishing and River Street writes in exchange for an honest review.
I also had received book one earlier in the year and quite enjoyed it. This one wasn’t as engaging for me, I think it was the amount of characters that made it a bit hard for me to follow. It took place in the same place as the first book and had some over lapping characters but could be read out of order. It did revolve around the murder of a somewhat famous psychic in their town who ended up having a lot of enemies and we are trying to find out who hated him enough to kill him. I wasn’t expecting the person who it was so the author did a good job of keeping me off of their trail.
I would still recommend this book to fans of murder mysteries.
I also had received book one earlier in the year and quite enjoyed it. This one wasn’t as engaging for me, I think it was the amount of characters that made it a bit hard for me to follow. It took place in the same place as the first book and had some over lapping characters but could be read out of order. It did revolve around the murder of a somewhat famous psychic in their town who ended up having a lot of enemies and we are trying to find out who hated him enough to kill him. I wasn’t expecting the person who it was so the author did a good job of keeping me off of their trail.
I would still recommend this book to fans of murder mysteries.
July 7, 2025
Meredith Island is usually a sleepy place but this summer it's being visited not only by a large group of archeology students but also an infamous (conman) psychic. When a body is found in the archeologists' trench, multiple folks are suspected, including resident Kate's neighbour and her friend's son. When the police investigation stalls, Kate gets involved against her better judgement.
I really enjoyed this cozy mystery, including the Welsh island setting and the interesting cast of characters. I liked the plotting and how the investigation played out, and the book kept my attention throughout.
I really enjoyed this cozy mystery, including the Welsh island setting and the interesting cast of characters. I liked the plotting and how the investigation played out, and the book kept my attention throughout.
January 11, 2026
“A Dark Death” is a Meredith Island Mystery, but is reviewed here as a standalone novel. The story focuses on Kate Galway, an author living on Meredith Island, Wales and hoping to work on her latest novel.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. This book is ultimately a who-dun-it with suspects galore. The setting is well-developed and provides a fantastic and interesting background for a murder mystery. There’s so many connections between the suspects and the murdered that the reveals just keep coming. Find the full blog post at heatherlbarksdale.com
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. This book is ultimately a who-dun-it with suspects galore. The setting is well-developed and provides a fantastic and interesting background for a murder mystery. There’s so many connections between the suspects and the murdered that the reveals just keep coming. Find the full blog post at heatherlbarksdale.com
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
October 9, 2025
A Dark Death is the second in the Meredith Island Mystery series. This book can be read as a stand-alone. I haven't read book 1, but I plan on going back and reading it, I really enjoyed book 2.
I enjoyed the mystery in this story. A con man comes to the island claiming he is a psychic. At the same time, there is a group of archeological students on the island digging up an ancient site. When the psychic turns up dead at the archeological digital site, and a local ends up being a prime suspect, the islands resident mystery writer takes it upon herself to investigate.
The story has a bit of a haunting vibe with the seance at the centuries old manor, the stormy atmosphere, the dig of an old monastery site, with potentially Roman origins, and the way the body was laid out.
I was really surprised at the ending and who the perpetrator ended up being, and the why really surprised me as well. I do enjoy when a mystery isn't predictable and is difficult to solve.
I like the characters in this one, particularly our amateur sleuther, Kate Galway, and the setting was fantastic. I do love a story set in an isolated location with a closed circle of suspects.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable story and I absolutely recommend this one for fans of mysteries.
I enjoyed the mystery in this story. A con man comes to the island claiming he is a psychic. At the same time, there is a group of archeological students on the island digging up an ancient site. When the psychic turns up dead at the archeological digital site, and a local ends up being a prime suspect, the islands resident mystery writer takes it upon herself to investigate.
The story has a bit of a haunting vibe with the seance at the centuries old manor, the stormy atmosphere, the dig of an old monastery site, with potentially Roman origins, and the way the body was laid out.
I was really surprised at the ending and who the perpetrator ended up being, and the why really surprised me as well. I do enjoy when a mystery isn't predictable and is difficult to solve.
I like the characters in this one, particularly our amateur sleuther, Kate Galway, and the setting was fantastic. I do love a story set in an isolated location with a closed circle of suspects.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable story and I absolutely recommend this one for fans of mysteries.
June 23, 2025
Intriguing plot, engaging characters, and a beautiful location. I look forward to the further exploits of the Meredith Island gang.
February 7, 2026
A very satisfying mystery set on an island in Wales. Lots of fun Welsh names!
August 28, 2025
I enjoyed this book very much. There were sufficient twists and turns to keep me gripped to the story.
If you would like to read my full review please visit my blog at:
https://leftontheshelfbookblog.blogsp...
If you would like to read my full review please visit my blog at:
https://leftontheshelfbookblog.blogsp...
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews