It’s true that, by reading a lot of crime and detective fiction and trying to write three posts a week on that subject, I sometimes forget to just enjoy my reading. So thank heavens it’s time for another Alasdair Beckett-King novel, with Sabotage at Sea (2025) being the fourth in the Montgomery Bonbon corpus.
Continue readingClaire Powell
#1226: Minor Felonies – Montgomery Bonbon: Mystery at the Manor (2024) by Alasdair Beckett-King [ill. Claire Powell]
A third entry in the delightfully silly Montgomery Bonbon series, from the mind of the equally delightfully silly Alasdair Beckett-King, Mystery at the Manor (2024) is…delightfully silly.
Continue reading#1204: Minor Felonies – The Swifts (2023) by Beth Lincoln
On the day that a child is born into the ancient, vast Swift clan, the family Dictionary is placed before the new mother and, with her eyes closed, she opens it and runs her finger down the page until it settles “on the word and definition that would become her child’s name”. What Beth Lincoln chooses to do with this intriguing idea in her debut The Swifts (2023) is…a little confused.
Continue readingIn GAD We Trust – Episode 30: The Joys of Detective Fiction + Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) by Alasdair Beckett-King [w’ Alasdair Beckett-King]

The return of my In GAD We Trust podcast, and a welcome return for Alasdair Beckett-King, comedian and now children’s author.
Continue reading#1123: Minor Felonies – Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) by Alasdair Beckett-King [ill. Claire Powell]
Everyone enjoys a break from work, but when your job is to turn up somewhere and have a baffling crime occur, how can you guarantee you’re taking time off until after you’ve left? Hercule Poirot, Inspector Cockrill, Sir Henry Merrivale, Nigel Strangeways, and swathes of other classic era detectives have had their holidays interrupted by murder, and to this pantheon we can now add Montgomery Bonbon, he of the indefinable foreign accent and curious physical similarity to a ten year-old girl.
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