The Coniston Case

This is the first book I've read of Tope's Lake District series, the others being part of the Cotswold series. I liked the mystery; it kept me going and I preferred the characters in this book, compared to the ones in the Cotswold mysteries. I plan on reading more of Ben, Simmy and Melanie.......more

I wanted to like this a lot, given the location. But apart from rather a lot of detail about which roads people used to get from A to B, I didn’t really feel I was in the Lake District especially. Perhaps that was me expecting too much. What I did find, having not read other books in the series, was......more

I found the third book in the Lake District series rather silly. Simmy Brown runs a florist shop and it's coming on Valentine's day. You'd think she'd be happy for the business, but she does little but complain. The trouble starts when she keeps getting anonymous orders to send flowers to people who......more

I liked it. It’s a good story line with a few twists and turns. It’s easy to get to know Simmy, the flower shop owner, and you grow to love her. But the book does mention ‘what happened at Christmas’ a lot, so I’m assuming there was another book I was supposed to read before this? Anyway, there’s th......more

The earlier books in this series had implausible plots, but this one is just weird, there's a bizarre rant against current scientific consensus on climate change, completely unnecessary inclusion of Latin translation homework, and two separate plots that both make no real sense. Its all just a bit s......more