The author's hometown of Harrogate provides a perfect location for a murder mystery. It is also the home of Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. If Lorna Snowden keeps writing like she has here I wouldn't be surprised if she won one of their coveted prizes very soon.
The characters are brilliantly observed and thankfully more 'real' than 'cozy' and sustain interest in a plot where the murder doesn't occur until more than halfway through the book. The writing is compassionate, elegant, witty, wicked, and utterly charming. The denouement is devilishly clever.

Lydia Buckley is prompt for the Ashdale Players’ current production of Aladdin and becomes embroiled in a web of deceit with Simon Saxby-Jones in the middle.

Simon Saxby-Jones almost had it all, good looks, success, charisma and the material possessions that come with a large salary. Simon had always been power hungry and driven, as a brilliant architect he worked for Aztec Developments, married the boss’s daughter and secured his future. Local estate agent and Councillor Hugo Marshall and Simon have set up a clandestine partnership which uses underhand and unethical tactics to make lucrative profits. Hugo is about to become Mayor and would like to dissolve the partnership, but Simon refuses. Simon is interested in farm buildings belonging to a local landowner, Jonathan Sturdy and, although Simon is married, he begins a relationship with Jonathan’s daughter, Bella.

Things get complicated when Simon’s duplicity is discovered and he has to exert pressure to keep it secret, then his relationship with Bella takes an unexpected turn. Hugo becomes desperate when all his attempts to extract himself from the partnership fail and it becomes clear that someone knows about how the partnership makes its profit. Add in the discovery of a couple of people from Simon’s past, one of whom may have a grudge, the colourful characters who live in Ashdale not to mention her ex-husband Vinnie and his new wife and Lydia has her hands full.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley #netgalley

I've always been fascinated with movie theaters and theaters in general in the history that they hold this was the perfect cozy mystery for me.

What A Tangled Web….
Lydia Buckley, prompt for the Ashdale Players amateur dramatics troupe, finds herself embroiled in a tangled web of lies, deceit and subterfuge in this first in a new series of mysteries. With a cast of well drawn characters, and an entertaining plot, this develops into an enjoyable and engaging whodunit.

This was a mostly enjoyable read, although I think it fell a bit short of what the author was trying to do. Parts of it felt like Agatha Christie or maybe Midsomer Murders, but other parts felt a little forced. I also didn’t love the way the (very few) black characters were written - very stereotypical.