An original and thoroughly enjoyable mystery novel with lots of layers and plenty of twists. Miss Hortense is a unique and refreshing addition to the ever growing list of spinster amateur sleuths. She’s a no-nonsense lady with exceptional investigative skills. I do hope we get to see more of her.

Listen, I thought I knew cozy mysteries. I've devoured every Miss Marple adventure until I could practically recite them in my sleep, and I've got a soft spot for any sleuth who solves crimes between afternoon tea and garden pruning. But Miss Hortense? She's something else entirely, and I'm absolutely here for it.

Meet Miss Hortense: retired nurse, cake-baking extraordinaire, and possibly the most observant woman in Birmingham's quiet suburb of Bigglesweigh. This isn't your typical English village mystery, though. Miss Hortense emigrated from Jamaica in 1960, and her sharp eye for detail extends far beyond spotting murderers—she can tell if her turmeric's been watered down before her first bite of beef patty. That's the kind of authenticity that had me grinning from page one.

What absolutely hooked me was how Pennant weaves Miss Hortense's investigative prowess into her community work with the Pardner network—a group of Black investors supporting their community's success. It's brilliant social commentary wrapped in a murder mystery, and it never feels heavy-handed. When an unidentified body turns up in a Pardner member's home with a cryptic bible verse, Miss Hortense's past comes crashing back in ways that made my heart race.

The mystery itself is deliciously twisty. Mel Pennant doesn't just give us a puzzle to solve; she gives us a character study of a woman whose thirty-five years of nursing left her "afraid of nobody"—whether that's a local drug dealer or a priest. Miss Hortense's ability to decode people's secrets with just a glance feels authentic rather than contrived, probably because she's lived enough life to have earned that wisdom.

Where this book truly shines is in its exploration of community, memory, and forgiveness. Miss Hortense isn't just solving a murder; she's confronting "the worst moment of her life"—something her community has never let her forget. The emotional stakes feel real and raw, elevating this beyond your standard cozy fare.

My only quibble? I wanted more time with some of the secondary characters, particularly within the Pardner network. But honestly, that's because Mel Pennant created such a rich world that I didn't want to leave.

If you love cozy mysteries but crave something with more depth and cultural richness than the typical village setting, Miss Hortense is your new obsession. She's got Miss Marple's observational skills with a backstory that actually matters, set in a community that feels vibrantly alive.

Consider me officially converted to the Church of Miss Hortense—and desperately hoping this is the first of many adventures.

Miss Hortense is an admirable and original woman who lives in England but has retained her Jamaican heritage. I like that she is an older protagonist and that her past life experiences are implicit in the way her community values her and her skill at solving mysteries. Even though it took me a while to fully understand the dialogue, it gives the story a pleasing uniqueness and makes the action and characters authentic. It's a complex mystery with many suspects, and sometimes, the detailed world-building caused me to lose the thread of the mystery. I found it emotional and engaging, and would read another of Miss Hortense's murder mysteries.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

I struggled to engage with this book. It wasn't about the patois, it more that it seemed to jump around and characters were not really introduced fully. Just my personal opinion

I enjoy a mystery that features an ‘amateur pensioner sleuth’; Miss Marple being the original and The Thursday Murder Club gang more recent favourites. So when I read the blurb for this one and saw a chapter titled ‘Geriatric Mafia’ I knew it would be for me.

Miss Hortense is a formidable character - strong, fearless and tenacious in the pursuit of justice. She has a great understanding of human nature and with her network of friends and associates she is able to uncover any wrong doing.

With a close knit community of characters, including the obligatory local clergy and the witty one liners, it has all the hallmarks of ‘cosy’ crime. Whilst the sleuthing and the punishment of crimes may be somewhat unorthodox, some of the crimes feel very real. In particular, those involving violence against women.

The book also touches on the subject of communities marginalised by authorities and the inadequacy of investigations into certain crimes. There is a serious message amongst the sleuthing and the stand offs.

I really enjoyed it and I’m hopeful there will be a sequel as I’d love to see Miss Hortense in action again.

Miss Hortense arrived in Bigglesweigh in the 1960s after having followed her sister Evie from Jamaica. Life was a struggle as "their kind" were not accepted amid the locals. When some women are attacked the last thing they want to do is go to the Police.
Many years later, Miss Hortense is still dealing with repercussions from that time when her nemesis is found dead. Some people think there is something fishy about the death and ask Miss Hortense to look into it. Around the same time a young woman arrives from London after her mother dies.
A tale of death, secrets, lies and friendship. A fun read.

This book was superb – such an impressive debut! I devoured it. The characters and their complex, twisty lives were exquisitely rendered, I felt like I had been placed in the middle of the vibrant community. In addition to being a truly unique mystery, it was also a great snapshot into Black British life in the past. If you like Miss Marple, you'll love Miss Hortense.

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.