This is the second in a series featuring real British mystery authors. This one revolves around Dorothy L Sayers and the embarrassment of an illegitimate son. Christie, Sayers, and Eliza travel to a writers conference on the famed railroad only to be faced with murders. I like Eliza. She is a good heroine with vigor and some serious defensive moves from her time as an agent. Theo is a worthy sidekick. Both characters are drawn well.

It is fun that these historical mysteries by Oliver are based on the actual Detection Club with members like Chesterton, Christie and Sayers. The factual basis for this novel is revealed in an Author's Note. I liked learning some about poisons. I am impressed Kelly arranged this adventure as the basis for one of Sayer's actual mysteries.

This is a fun historical cozy mystery. And it looks like the adventure is not over as Eliza and Theo are left with yet another mystery in MI5 to solve.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent review.

This was an intriguing mystery with many famous characters all aboard the famous Orient Express. We are in the land of espionage, spies and double agents.
There’s secrets, hidden clues and ciphers to be found. The story is told from two POVs, both Eliza, Dorothy Sayers secretary and Theo, an aspiring writer. The action also moves into and around Istanbul. And Serbia. But this is not explored and we do not really have a satisfactory conclusion. An interesting read.

Crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers is traveling aboard the Orient Express to represent the Detection Club at a convention in Constantinople with her secretary Eliza Baker. Also on the train is fellow top author Agatha Christie, although she plans to join an archaeological dig in Baghdad. Soon Dorothy recognises a rather unwelcome blast from her past and a man drops dead in the dining car. It looks like murder and suspicion falls upon Dorothy and one of her old friends but when another traveller is also killed, the race is on to find a killer before they reach their destination.
I expected this book to be aligned to the famous story by Christie, a murder mystery, but with two of the top golden age novelists from the Detection Club at the heart of it, solving the crime using their sharp wit and the wealth of experience they had gained during their work. Instead it’s much more of a cosy spy story with Eliza at the centre of the investigation, the young woman who appears to have learned all her super-sleuthing skills whilst picking pockets as a child and during a single month’s work at Scotland Yard before it all went wrong. Her “love interest” Theo is an aspiring writer and a bit of a drip, whilst Eliza, although very clever and astute, is over the top feisty and a little unbelievable at times, and Christie and Sayers are much less strident than I would have imagined and take more minor roles. The plot itself is good with plenty of twists and action and the sumptuousness of the famous train is described in all its opulent glory, but I found the characters a bit hard to take to, and there were a lot of chess references and also American terms and expressions throughout for me as an English person. However, it’s an easy and entertaining read and I’m sure it’s a tale which many readers will enjoy. 3.5*

A cozy mystery/thriller with a spunky protagonist, a cute canine assistant, and a couple of famous mystery writers as supporting characters.

This book is an homage to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and while nobody can live up to the genius of Christie’s mystery-writing, this book had plenty of compelling elements: murder, espionage, a jewel heist, international intrigue, and a crew of meddling civilians, plus a bonus romance plot. The writing was engaging throughout and the author’s attention to small details and meta-fictional elements did not go unappreciated, though the action veered toward the melodramatic at times and the mystery was left a little open-ended for my taste, though it certainly guarantees I’ll be seated for the next installment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for the opportunity to be an early reader of this title, out today!

The Case of the Body on the Orient Express is the second in Kelly Oliver's Detective Club cosy mystery series. Although it works as a standalone, I would suggest reading the first book, as it introduces the idea of the club, and the relationships between the characters.

This time round, Dorothy, Agatha and Eliza head off to Istanbul aboard the Orient Express, to attend a writer's convention. They soon find themselves caught up in murder and mystery.

I loved Theo and Jane's characters in this book - it was good to have their roles extended and to be given further information about them. I love the references the author makes to the novels of Dorothy and Agatha, and the addition of George Orwell this time round was fun! I look forward to book 3.

The intrigue and bodies are adding up on the Orient Express. Eliza and Theo are on the case. I enjoyed the book and the parts of history relating to real people.. The story is a great read that will have you guessing throughout.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and Boldwood Publishing and leaving a review by my own choice.

2 1/2 stars. I love the idea of The Detection Club, an actual group of some of the most famous British mystery writer, getting involved in solving crimes. They actually did select unsolved mysteries and tried to come up with the actual solutions. While this did involve Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers a bit, they weren't the main characters. That fell to Eliza, Dorothy's secretary who acts as a secretary to the Secretary of the Club. She and a potential love interest Theo, who just happens to be working on the Orient Express that they are all taking to Istanbul for a writers' conference when someone drops dead during a meal. Eliza thinks it is poison. There are plenty of people who have reason to hate the man, including Dorothy who is being blackmailed by him. Eliza and Theo will have to work hard to uncover who the culprit is before they disappear into smoke...

So this wasn't exactly what I was expecting but that was all right. It didn't focus so much on the Detection Club, but Agatha and Dorothy do play important if small roles. It was fun to see some references to their books.

Eliza is a little too perfect with having too many skills. Also, she thinks that the rules don't apply to her. She wants to leave the compartment when everyone is confined to it by the police because of course she knows better than them. In some ways it works because police from another country aren't going to take it serious when she says that she thinks someone poisoned the man. It is a time when they are going to dismiss a woman. If they aren't really going to investigate, leads will be missed or destroyed before they finally realize there was a murder so Eliza must do something to find the killer. But I also found it annoying that she just ignored all the rules. And Theo, her accomplice, spent far too much time mooning over her.

There were a lot of great descriptions of the Orient Express. And there were plenty of twists in turns in the mystery. It did fell a little unfinished because Eliza couldn't bring things to a conclusion, she had to leave that to someone else. To say more would expose too many spoilers.

Entertaining but pretty much run-of-the-mill.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers take an Orient Express trip that turns deadly when a fellow passenger is murdered. Dorothy becomes a suspect, forcing her secretary Eliza to solve the crime before the train reaches Istanbul.

I love Kelly Oliver’s books! This one starts out as a murder mystery and ends up as a spy thriller with an ongoing series arc. The novel can be read as a standalone. It has lots of twists and a swoony romance subplot. The writing is fun and insightful. I enjoyed the audiobook narration.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Eliza is now well established as secretary to the secretary of the Detection Club. She is enroute to Constantinople with Dorothy and Agatha pn the Orient Express. In Paris, unknown to Eliza, Theo and his flatmate Eric, board to work as crew.
She hasn't seen Theo since he fled to Paris two years before. She doesn't know that he holds a brightly burning torch for her.
During the journey there is a murder. The man is connected to Dorothy's past and Eliza must use all of her skills to prove that Dorothy had nothing to do with it. When a friend of Dorothy's is also killed, no one knows who is safe and who is the killer. When reach their destination the intrigue doesn't stop and Eliza and her friends are caught up in a deadly situation.
A good read that gallops along quite nicely.

This was a fun historical mystery with history's greatest mystery writers. I didn't want it to end. I look forward to more in this series.

Original and fun!!! You won't know who will drop dead next.

Eliza Baker is the secretary to the London Detection Club secretary Dorothy L. Sayers. Eliza, Dorothy, and Agatha Christie will all board the Orient Express to Istanbul to a writers conference. Eliza bids adieu to her sister Jane, who works for MI5, and her beagle Queenie. While aboard, Theo Sharp and his roommate Eric Arthur Blair ( George Orwell) will join Eliza, whom he has a crush on. There Theo will help Eliza and the rest of the group discover why Ivan Grigor, a man of questionable character, was poisoned. They will search for Ivan's wife Lena who has gone missing aboard the Orient Express and who shot Hugo " Peachy" Fitzroy, a man who was writing a book about Tje Obsidian Cartel and who knew Dorothy's greatest secret.

This book was such a fun read. Having Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers in one murder mystery was delightful.

Thank you, Netgalley and Boldwood Books, for this ARC. All opinions are entirely my own.

I enjoyed the second book of the series as much as I enjoyed the first, maybe even a little more.

Needless to say, if you didn’t like the first book, you will most likely not like the second…

Eliza, the physically strong but emotionally insecure protagonist, changes more throughout this book than during the first.
The mystery about the body and its solution are interesting.
The spy theme gets more prominent. The chess-playing seems to lose some importance.
What clearly makes the series special is having Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie "around“.
This is a lot of fun, to me. Additionally, I like the setting in the train.

Although this is the second book of the "Detection Club Mystery“ series, you can easily read this one before the first one.

3.75 stars
I hadn’t read the first in The Detection Club series but it didn’t impact on my enjoyment of The Case of the Body on the Orient Express.
This is a fun and entertaining read with all the twists and capers of a murder mystery involving Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. Seeing these great writers of mystery involved in the suspicious death of a fellow traveller was a nice twist on the usual locked room stories.
Eliza and Theo were great investigators and the setting of the Orient Express added that little touch of luxury. I’d definitely look to read the first in the series and am intrigued about how this will continue into book 3

The Case of the Body on the Orient Express is a fantastic and gripping murder mystery. I loved reading Kelly Oliver's iteration of Agatha Christie. I was enthralled by the setting on the Orient Express.

The author delivered a twisted tale of murder and intrigue. The readers are introduced to many characters aboard the train. The main characters are Agatha, Dorothy, Eliza, and Theo. Dorothy is writer, Eliza is Dorothy's assistant, and Theo is a man from Eliza's past who is an aspiring writer. The murder suspects are plentiful and include Dorothy, who was last seen in a heated exchange with the first victim. Eliza and Theo come back together to investigate the deaths aboard the Orient Express.

I loved Eliza's character. I enjoyed meeting and getting to know her. She may have lacked a little common sense but she was determined and liked her strength. As the sleuthing duo inspect the scenes of the murders, they find their examinations are complicated by not only the number of suspects but the additional body found. Eliza thinks she may be in over her head, which is confirmed when Jane, Eliza's MI5 sister, comes aboard.

I loved the 1920s setting. The author did a fantastic job setting the stage for the mystery. Several characters were introduced along with potentials means, motives, and opportunities. The author tossed in red herrings and subtly slid in clues for the reader to follow.

I didn't read book 1 so this is my first experience with this author, series, and character set. I loved every single bit of this story.

I loved this book! I just couldn’t put it down it reminds me of Agatha Christie and Helena Dixon books. I just love a good cozy mystery. I loved the first book in this series and this book was just as good. I look forward to the next book in this series.

I would highly recommend reading this book if you love a good cozy mystery.

I would like to thank Boldwood Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book early.

As usual in my reviews, I will not rehash the publisher's blurb or give away the plot!

This book is the second in the "Eliza Baker" new series, and is a "cosy murder" mystery set mainly on - as the title says - The Orient Express!

Once again, we meet several characters from the earlier novel - including the main character Eliza Baker, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, and more!

I enjoyed this novel, and the various nods to real-life authors and characters from other novels by Kelly Oliver.

My only small complaint (repeated in several reviews of Kelly Oliver novels) is that the language used is not entirely correct - featuring some Americanisms. A good copy editor is needed to rewrite those for the UK market in future.

Recommended for fans of "cosy mystery" novels.

This would be an ideal novel to take on a journey or on holiday. I'm looking forward to reading about further adventures of Eliza, The Detective Club, and Theo.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

This is the second book in this lovely cozy crime series, set in the early part of the 20th century and featuring lots of real life characters such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, among a cast of fictional ones.

In this book our protagonist Eliza is once again in the midst of a crime while travelling on the Orient Express she and the authors meet up with old friends and foes, and in no time one of them is dead.

The setting is very well described and the characters have lots of life and spark, it was good to have had the background knowledge of some of them from book 1 and the see the development of the relationship between Eliza and Theo. The plot is well developed and unfolds nicely, leaving a climax at the end and the lead into book 3.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, this was not at all what I was expecting. It has nothing to do with the writing, the setting, or really the characters, although I did have some problems with that aspect of the book. But the plot confused me. Let me explain.

In the previous book, the story ended on a cliffhanger about Theo, which I loved because I want to be drawn into a series. So when I went into this book, I was expecting the plot to be about the little mystery with Theo and that being built off the story of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Sounds good, right? Well, that’s not what happened. In fact, no one even mentioned the bit of suspicious information that left Theo on that cliffhanger at all. I’m sorry, what? I think that would have been a tremendous addition to the story because the whole adventure and case felt a bit flat for me. Theo would have been fleshed out more as a character, and Eliza would have had to stop seeing the world in the black-and-white, distrusting way she always has.

But no. Eliza was the same as always: the stubborn, girl boss I can’t stand. 🤦‍♀ Theo couldn’t stop thinking about and pining after Eliza, which made him quite annoying this time around. But he’s not so bad when you compare him to Eliza, since he has limitations that normal human beings have. Agatha and Dorothy were great, and I have nothing bad to say about them.

I think I’m being generous with my 3-star rating, but even though certain things didn’t add up or make sense, the main character disappointed me yet again, and the murder case was meh, I did enjoy it. I haven’t read any of Agatha Christie’s novels yet, but I’ve seen the movies based on Hercule Poirot’s cases, and those were super fun. I bet the books are better. 😉 But I do recommend the book to you because I think you might enjoy it. What I don’t find great, you might love. That is the beauty of the book world we live in. ❤

The second in the Detection Club series and it’s 1928, two years since the last case. The club is a group of literary writers who all write detective fiction, two of whom Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, together with Dorothy’s assistant Eliza, are in Paris boarding the Orient Express to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for the International Writers Convention. Also on board is Eliza’s former boyfriend Theo, and would be author, working his way as a Public Area Attendant!

Briefly, Dorothy is shocked to receive a note from a former friend but even more shocked when, after joining them for dinner he drops dead and Dorothy is the prime suspect. Cue amateur sleuths Eliza and Theo, with help from Agatha and Dorothy.

Told from the perspectives of Theo and Eliza this is a fun and interesting cosy crime novel. Eliza is quite a feisty determined woman albeit rather naive at times and kind and caring Theo is the perfect foil for her. The book mentions the opulent Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, which I was lucky enough to visit last year, which also has connections to the famous 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie, as mentioned in the first book in the series. Good plot, interesting characters, amazing settings; what’s not to like. Very entertaining.

I enjoyed this murder mystery where some members of The Detection Club (a group of mystery writers) head to a writers convention in Istanbul. Agatha Christie is on board as well as Dorothy Sayers and her secretary Eliza. When a murder is discovered, Eliza takes the lead in trying to solve the mystery. The author did a good job with lots of clues, red herrings and twists and turns in the plot. Most of the characters were quirky and likeable and she didn't lean to heavily on having Christie and Sayers on board. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy of this book for my honest review.