The setting, vibes and characters immediately pulled me in and I was hooked since the first chapter! I finished this in one sitting because I just had to know how it was going to end! This was my first book by Anna Beer and I'd love to check out more!

Dr Eve Brook is extremely smart, proud of her PhD, her daughter, and her professional accomplishments, a fan of classic crime novels, and endlessly curious about things. Nothing excites her more than digging deep into a particular topic and following the clues to get answers to her questions. She's very good at this. What she's not great at is interpersonal interactions. She can come across as aloof, but that's residue from her painful childhood with an addicted mother. Eve has a carefully constructed protective shell around herself. So it's with some surprise that she finds herself at a New Year's Eve party in a swanky home, with a guy she had a weekend hook-up with a few months before. She's uncomfortable when she arrives and the feeling only deepens as the visit goes on. After a disturbing night, she decided to leave early and prepares to head home, but she's stopped by news of a car accident that killed one of the people in the house and seriously injured another. Or was it an accident? Eve is involved in the investigation, whether she wants to be or not, but what she really wants to spend her time on is researching the life story of a Jewish women whose name she came across when doing research for a client who unexpectedly inherited a house where he thinks some lucrative information about a former owner's relationship with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien may be found.

I love Eve. I can relate to her--in various ways, she reminds me of myself. I love the way she dives into something that might be seen as peripheral to others and keeps digging. I love the way she makes connections between seemingly trivial historical moments and bigger events. She wants to know why things happen. So I was immersed in this book from the start. I was interested in the mystery, but also in what Eve was finding out about Esther and her experiences in the UK in the 1940s. Anna Beer is extremely skilled at seamlessly weaving the history into the story. She's an excellent writer overall and she includes a section at the end telling readers places and events in the story are real (and providing links to find out more) and which are fictitious. . The mystery aspect was well-constructed, as were the settings. When Eve has a rough day and just wants to go sit in her bed in her cozy little house to read a mystery novel, I'm right there with her. Where I do feel some distance and resistance to Eve as a character is in her 'romantic' relationships. For someone with a grown daughter, she can sometimes come across as immature and clueless. However, in thinking about this, I realized that I have known people exactly like this, especially lonely people who find it hard to trust others and who just want someone to love them. It made me uncomfortable, but I do think it's realistic.

This is an excellent and highly enjoyable read that I loved spending time with. I've read both books in the series, although one doesn't have to have read the first one to enjoy this one. I hope Eve will reappear one day--I'd love to read more!

I thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for a digital review copy.

Uneven tone and a little unclear whether or not it's a standalone or whether it requires knowledge of previous book in series.

I thoroughly enjoyed An Inkling of Death. It is clearly very well researched, but the historical detail never gets in the way of a gripping story. The twists and turns kept me turning the pages, always wanting to know what would happen next.

The narrator and investigator, Eve Brook, is an interesting, troubled character, with plenty of flaws and not always the easiest person to warm to, but I found myself becoming increasingly invested in her as the story unfolded. I also loved the strength of the women Anna Beer creates. They are very much individuals, with their own difficulties, choices and determination, rather than simply supporting characters.

I particularly enjoyed the way the novel explores the controversial historical debates of Oxford between the wars . Anna Beer makes the issues accessible without oversimplifying them, allowing the reader to understand the different viewpoints while remaining firmly within an engaging mystery. I also loved the way the main plot and subplot gradually came together, with the different threads being brought together so cleverly.

A compelling mystery, fascinating historical detail, strong female characters and plenty of twists made this a thoroughly enjoyable read.

It's difficult to fairly review a book when you dislike the main character. I read the previous series debut and found Eve, Dr. Eve Brooks, a scholar and researcher, to be quirky but interesting and skilled at finding out information. I did note the complex plot.

This mystery features a complex historical situation. Eve is going through old papers and stumbles on a situation that impacts the finances of an Oxford college with a Jewish refugee and a British Nazi.

The complicated multi-generational story was sometimes too much for me to follow. But my main problem was the protagonist. Eve is in her mid-40s and I found it jarring to see her strangely adolescent responses to a romantic situation that didn't pan out. She meets and connects with Greg and they have a madly sexy weekend. But every interaction with him after that is strange. She goes to a New Year's weekend at his parents' home and things go from bad to worse, including unexpected death. Eve, an intelligent women, can't see that he is jerking her around. And when she does eventually admit he is truly a cad, after way too many seesaw emotions, her response is anger at the person who finally opens her eyes.

I found her emotionally unstable, over reactive, and just plain strange. It could be this one just wasn't a good fit for me. The writing was fine, and the plotting multi-layered. I was disappointed I didn't like it more. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.