Colourful characters and with clever history setting, this is an intriguing mystery. Miss Hortense is one of those characters who is larger than life - a zest for what’s right in the world.
Twists and sleight of hand keep you guessing from the beginning and interested til the end

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June 13, 2025
A little bit Thursday Murder Club, with a hint of Agatha Christie, all told in a Jamaican/British accent!

This book was quite a bit of fun, although I did find it hard to keep track of the characters as the narrative goes back and forward in time. It deserves to have the first part read in one sitting in order to establish who is who.

As with all good murder mysteries, the twist is worth the wait!

Miss Hortense is originally from Jamaica and emigrated to Birmingham in the 1960s.

Now a retired nurse, she takes pride in all she does, and has a knack for knowing other people’s secrets.

When a man is found dead, Miss Hortense can’t help but get involved, and wants to find out who killed him and why.

I did struggle a bit with the dialect and the amount of characters in the story. I found the story quite slow but quite enjoyed it once it picked up. I did find the recipes included throughout the story to be interesting.

Miss Hortense is a retired nurse who lives in a Birmingham suburb after coming to the UK from Jamaica in 1960. When a body turns up in the home of one of her acquaintances, she is drawn into investigating. She's pretty fearless - she's had to be to survive more than three decades in nursing and living in an area that wasn't exactly welcoming when she first arrived. And she's not a stranger to investigating things because for years she's been checking out the background of potential investments of the Pardner network, which is a sort of community savings scheme. But this investigation leaders her into areas she would rather not think about, and dangers that she thought she had put behind her.

I really enjoyed this - Miss Hortense is very independent and self-reliant, and somewhat abrasive at times, but she makes for a fascinating lens to look at a very tight-knit community that is hiding plenty of secrets. I read this in less than a day, and would happily return to the world of Miss Hortense - and I hope that there is a sequel.

From the outset, I thought this book would offer up the standard cosy crime fayre, and it did in parts. Although, we also had aspects of gritty realism.

Sometimes, the descriptions of the attacks took the novel out of the cosy crime genre and turned it into a grittier detective fiction. The setting on the streets of Birmingham wasn’t your usual seemingly perfect village or sun-drenched locale.

However, it’s nice to read something more down to earth. Miss Hortense was on the case, looking out for her community in multiple murder investigations.

I didn’t find her an especially warm character, but she did make a very good amateur sleuth. She stood for what she believed in and put herself into dangerous situations to uncover the truth. I liked that we got to see ‘behind the scenes’ into her life, which really helped to understand her character.

In many ways, reading the novel was like stepping into a bit of a time warp. Needless to say, the plot interwove two eras, the 1960s and the 1990s. The eras were vividly painted and really gave a good sense of time and place.

The plot jumped around the decades for a little while, and it took me the first few pages to get into the book. The Jamaican dialect was easy to follow. The recipes in the novel were also a bonus for anyone interested in Jamaican cooking.

Although I enjoyed the various character voices, Miss Hortense was the strongest. Each story strand created a lot of tension, and some of the twists were surprising. I expected to have more of an overlap between narratives, but I enjoyed the characterisation and community the writer created.

By the end of the novel, I felt Miss Hortense came into her own, and classic crime fans are sure to enjoy the homage to that oh so famous fictional detective. 4.5 stars.

One for all the cosy crime lovers!

Miss Hortense has lived within her community for several decades; moving from Jamaica to the UK in 1960 she settled in the Birminham suburb she calls home. She takes great pride in her home and 35 years of nursing left her quite capable of dealing with anyone who crosses her path. When a dead body is found in one of the nearby homes, Miss Hortense's past could be catching up with her - can she work out who the murderer is and, most importantly, why?

This is an excellent novel, and a very enjoyable read. The protagonist is one sharp cookie; a decent woman and not much gets past her but, even so, she has to dig in to work everything out. I'd quite like to read more books with this character. 4.5* and my recommendation.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley.

3.5 stars. I didn't ever fully engage with this book. I can't put my finger on why; it could just have been that I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it or that I didn't gel with the writing style. Whatever it was, I found it hard to keep the different character threads separated and this took me out of the story sometimes as I had to flip back to get things straight in my head..
The story itself is a good one - murder, intrigue, a close community, and a brilliant protagonist. Miss Hortense was my favourite thing about the book, she's aces! I know strong independent women like this, they keep the wheels in their neighbourhood turning, and because of that, are often disliked by different people at different times in their lives. Miss Hortense never lost her sense of what was right, though, even though it cost her personally. The pace at which little nuggets of information are shared with the readers is almost perfect, were it not for these strengths I wouldn't have carried on reading but I'm glad I did. An overall enjoyable first foray (I'm assuming) into the life of Miss Hortense are her friends and neighbours.

I loved getting to know Miss Hortense, she was an amazing character. Overall, it was a compelling read that beautifully blended historical depth with mystery.

Well, this is an odd one. The Amazon tagline has Sir Lenny Henry claiming it’s “Murder She Wrote as you’ve never seen it before”. That’s true, but as it differs in so many ways, you could just as easily say the same thing about Curtain by Agatha Christie.
This is a murder mystery set amongst the Windrush generation, which, to my embarrassment, I know very little about. I had the same sense of visiting the unknown as I did when I read A Mumbai Murder Mystery. Yes, that was set in a different country, but setting it in a culture that I have basically no experience of makes it just like reading an historical mystery. There’s not just new people to meet and a new crime to investigate, but a new world to discover.
Mel Pennant, the author, paints this world very well, and Miss Hortense is a fascinating creation. More than just a sleuth, she’s also an instigator of events, and a protector of her community and the reader is never quite sure of her motivations.
Where I struggled with this one is the sheer volume of important characters, both in the past and present. I needed a checklist to keep everyone straight but didn’t make one so I had to keep flicking back to remind myself who was who. My brain, just so writers know, can hold about ten characters – that’s it – so if you could aim for that, I’d appreciate it. Or put a dramatis personae at the front.
All in all, a really interesting read and a very different piece of crime fiction – as much a story about a community itself as the people in it. Definitely worth a look.

Miss Hortense is a retired Nurse living in Birmingham after leaving her home, Jamaica in 1960. Miss Hortense and her friends are great characters and there were moments of humour. It is a well written book with a plenty of twists and turns, which led to a surprising conclusion.

From the start the premise of this book intrigued me. The blurb gave me the vibe of Miss Marple/Murder She Wrote, two cosy crime styles that I grew up on and loved and it gave me this in spades.
Miss Hortense is a retired nurse who had emigrated from Jamaica in the 60’s and settled into a community in Bigglesweigh in Birmingham. Finding that they were being denied things such as bank accounts along with some others in the community they set up a parder… a way of raising money to help each other to make the most if their lives. Ousted from the group for reasons that become clear later she has washed her hands of everything to do with it until the current head of the pardner is found dead. Despite all the ill feelings between the two women Miss Hortense is determined to find out what really happened even if it means confronting things she would like to forget.
Miss Hortense is hard not to like; despite her age there is nothing she won’t get involved with and it is clear she still has some loyal friends within the community that turned their backs on her before. Her nephew although reluctant to get involved as it may jeopardise his carer in the police force is soon caught up in the unofficial investigations and he uncovers things that affect what he thought he knew about his own parents.
The book has a dual timeline that gives the reader the background to the characters and goes a long way to explain the events that are taking place and reveal secrets that some have worked hard to keep hidden. The glimpses into those early years really helped cement Miss Hortense as a person of principle and her determination to protect the community and her friends, whilst may have been intense at times showed that it was coming from the right place. Did she always get things right, maybe not but she never wavered from what she believed in.
Despite the cosy crime feel to this book it still dealt with some unpleasant themes that were dealt with more off the page than on so as not to distract from the story. As the secrets and lies are all revealed and the truth about what happened to set off the chain of events there is more than one person who must atone for their actions. Mel Pennant managed to give us a larger-than-life character in Miss Hortense, and I hope that it won’t be long before we catch up with her again.

I enjoyed this book and thought it stood out from other crime sleuth stories.
I liked getting to know the characters, particularly Miss Hortense, and i loved her history.
Can't wait for the second!
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Miss Hortense - what a wonderful character!
She is a mix of Miss Marple, Agatha Raisin and Precious Ramotswe, someone who gardens, bakes and solves crimes.
After retirement from nursing, Miss Hortense finds herself solving a crime at her local “partner” savings club.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a brand new series.

The first book I have read by Mel Pennant. A gentle thriller that entertained me with some whacky characters. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.

A Murder for Miss Hortense was an emotionally rich mystery speaking to some ugly truths of society. Mel Pennant is one to watch.

Miss Hortense joins a long line of iconic sleuths with an arresting voice right from the first page. She is exceptional – observant, clever and deeply caring behind a wall of steel. Watching her work with her investigation was fantastic. She takes no rubbish and she will let nothing stop her from solving this, especially as it harkens back to some of the darkest secrets of her own history. That emotional thread is horrific and really pulls on your heartstrings. I liked how Pennant sits in the messiness and complexity of the situation, allowing it to unravel and truly let the consequences of people’s actions unfold around them. Miss Hortense herself is hiding a deep hurt that still haunts her. She is complex and doesn’t always make the right choices, particuarly as we start to uncover the full truth from all those years ago, but she is all the more human and endearing for it. Life has been incredibly tough and you can understand the protective mechanisms she’s put in place for herself.

I really liked how Pennant wove the past and present together to give a rich backdrop of the history that brought this community together. People like Miss Hortense are the unsung heroes, the backbone of places that help them pull together and find a semblance of home in an environment that hates them to their core. The racism faced by the Windrush generation was despicable and is still perpetuated today. It feels like a timely reminder of the reality of the hatred and monstrosity that people can hold in their hearts, but it does also offer snatches of hope in finding a community that truly understands, uplifts and loves you.

A Murder for Miss Hortense introduces a sleuth that will steal your heart and a brilliant new voice that tells an enthralling and engaging story.

MIss Hortense is one heck of a formidable woman. A stalwart of the Jamaican community in Bigglesweigh, a matriarchal figure, of sorts, to many, much to the chagrin of one or two of her former neighbours. She was one of the founding members of the community Pardner network, a kind of Jamaican co-op system that helps out its members though a kind of savings and loan arrangement, she has long been ousted from her position there, but stills sees it as her duty to advise its remaining committee members on the safety of certain proposed investments - surreptitiously, of course. When one of the aforementioned committee members, her greatest nemesis and her the person who orchestrated Miss Hortenses' removal from the Pardner, is found dead, Miss Hortense instinctively knows there is more to her demise than meets the eye. When a second body is found soon after in the dead woman's home, MIss Hortense is forced to face a part of her past that she'd sooner forget, one that could prove to be deadly.

I really quite liked MIss Hortense as a character. She has a straight talking, no messing about personality. The kind of woman the phrase 'doesn't suffer fools' was designed to describe. She has a natural instinct and intuition when it comes to people who aren't acting on the straight and narrow, and whilst she may at times appear intolerant, she is actually a very compassionate women, even when it comes to those who would do her harm. Apart from Constance Brown, her nemesis and the reigning 'Pardner Lady'. She has a ind of Miss Marple esque awareness of what is going on around her, and a fearlessness, but with a decidedly Jamaican air.

I'll admit that I did struggle initially to settle into the book. The author quite rightly uses patois in the conversations between many of the characters, particularly those who emigrated from Jamaica in the 1960s as you would likely expect. There is a sense of authenticity derived from including this closeness, an almost closed door community, and use of the language that would come most naturally to them. My brain always, always, tries to translate any speech in local dialect, to English-English when I read, but when I switch off my inner duolingo and just let myself fall into the rhythm and patterns of their conversations, it all flows perfectly. The author does a great job in explaining some of the more traditional aspects of the Jamaican community, such as what a pardner is, which is necessary for those of us completely ignorant, and this makes the first half of the book feel like a different pace to the latter half, where we, and Miss Hortense, get to the crux of the investigation.

The book as a feel of classic amateur sleuth investigation akin to an Agatha Christie story but with a vibrant and passionate Jamaican heart. The more I was drawn into the story, the more curious I was about what it was in Miss Hortense's past that saw her thrown out of the pardner she created, and what was the cause of such deep regret. The story delves into the past of the characters, giving a glimpse of those early days in the 1960s to allow us to establish all of the main characters, although the majority of the action takes place in the present. There is a darker side to the book, although the toughest part of the story are told after the fact in a more respectful way, not forcing readers to live through what could otherwise be quite a difficult scene to read about. There is no doubting the impact of what happens in the past, or how it informs and reflects upon the present, but it is handled with full sensitivity by the author.

The final scenes take place in a very Miss Marple like way with all of the key suspects gathered in one place whilst Miss Hortense completes the big reveal. Whether everyone who deserves it gets their just deserts, I'll leave you to decide. But I am intrigued by that ending and the promise of more to come. Miss Hortense definitely has the smarts and I get the feeling that the community of Bigglesweigh hasn't given up all of its secrets yet. Definitely recommended for fans of a Christie Classic with a very modern, and more culturally inclusive, slant.

Having emigrated from Jamaica Miss Hortense has lived in a suburb of Birmingham for many years. Now retired from her nursing career she finds herself some what ostracised from many in her community following a death that occurred several decades ago . When Constance Brown is found dead in her home the past rears its head and secrets long buried start to affect the community. A book that covers many topics - murder, fraud, drug trafficking, racism and violence assault this is not your usual cosy crime. The use of Jamaican dialect did take me a little while to get use to but this added to the authenticity of the book and certainly didn’t spoil it for me. Miss Hortense is a strong feisty woman who rarely takes no for an answer and I loved her bravery and spirit. I’m hoping we may meet her again as the ending of the novel gives a hint of more to come. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel in return for an honest review

A community that looks after it's own. Ostracized by the locals but built and helped so many succeed. Blighted by one mistake and the death of a close friend. Instead of being the heart of the community relegated to the edges.
So many little things, not adding up leaf to Hotty to reopen the death of her friend and now the new deaths occuring.
A story that will open your eyes to generational racism and how the truth can be hidden in plain site.
A story that will keep you guessing.

Miss Hortense came to Birmingham in the 1960s from Jamaica and along with friends from her community she is out to solve the murder of the Pardner Lady who has been in charge of the local savings scheme but has come to an untimely end.

I really struggled with this one which is sad as I was looking forward to it.
I didn’t sink into the Jamaican way of speech which meant I had to go back reading out loud sentences just to make sense of the story.

A sad 2.5 stars from me.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Miss Hortense, a retired Jamaican nurse, is drawn into a murder mystery - can her knowledge of the area and its inhabitants help her solve the crime?

Unfortunately I found this story to be overly long and drawn out, and very hard to get into - I found myself skim reading a lot. I liked the added recipes scattered throughout, and I liked Hortense's character, but it just went on too long for me and lost my interest frequently.