Charming continuation of the Miss Seeton story world set in the Kent village with all of the aristocratic and petty gossip that readers find so fascinating, The language and mannerisms are very much of the period and modern audiences may find this style heavy going, but the characterisation sings out,

This book is a new adventure of Miss Seeton along with her Scotland Yard friends, the local villagers and local policemen. The book is written by Sarah J Mason, writing as Hamilton Crane. It is the first new book written about Miss Seeton and her many friends in about 20 years. We still have the charm and character driven plot we would expect from a Miss Seeton story. This is a wonderful entry in the series. If you have not read any other books in the series, you will still enjoy this quirky mystery.
The time is shortly after the end of World War II. Britain is still recovering and anti – Nazi emotions are still high.
Miss Seeton has returned to the village of Plummergen after a visit to the North. She finds that the village is still enjoying the after effects of Nigel Colveden's marriage to a French girl, the daughter of a count. A decision has been made to create a quilt which will show the history of the village. It will be Plummergen's answer to the historic French Bayeaux Tapestry. Women will select what part of history they will create and how they will create it. Some will embroider, some will applique and everyone will keep their needlework contributions secret. The history will include dramatic events back to medieval times.
As is normal in the village, gossip is running rampant and keeping secrets has become an art form.
When a mural is discovered in a Tudor cottage being renovated more history is about to be made. The mural is a painting of Henry the VII but when looked at upside down it is a menacing painting of Satan. The former occupants of the cottage evidently were Nazi sympathizers and they may or may not have had secret Nazi treasure.
Miss Seeton is drawn into another mystery by her Scotland Yard friends, Inspector Delphick and Officer Bob Ranger. She draws pictures showing events and people but these are not simply drawings. Her automatic pictures can show inner character of people as well as events which may not have yet happened. She is oblivious to what her pictures do for the police and how her art can look into the hearts of people.
As is always true in a Miss Seeton mystery, all threads eventually form a complete and wonderful picture.
This is an entry into the Miss Seeton series which is a fine example of Miss Seeton and her wonderful adventures.
I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I am voluntarily writing this review and all opinions are my own.

I enjoy the Miss Seeton books as it takes life back to an era where the pace of life was much slower and more genteel. The plot had several sidelines in and whilst they all came together at the end, made the reader wonder, at the time, where everything was going. It took me a little time to get into it at the start but ended up being a really enjoyable read.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, the estate of Hamilton Crane, and Farrago Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

This is an excellent novel with the intrepid Miss Seeton involved in the local ladies groups concocting a special gift for the returning local newlyweds Nigel and Louise Colveden and the exploration and preservation of a mural of Henry the Eighth found behind plaster in a house being remodeled for said newlyweds. Altogether a satisfying romp through the village of Plummergen and interesting descriptives of the needlework these dedicated ladies undertake for the newly married couple. The misinterpretations concerning Miss Seeton of several local gossips are especially entertaining, and as always the mystery is well concealed for a time, and takes second fiddle to the shenanigans of Miss Seeton and her bobby buddies.

Its been a long time since i had to put a book down without finishing it but managed to get through 2 chapters and had to stop. Found the writing style far to descriptive almost like i was reading a play. I had been looking forward to reading this and discovering a new author as i have really enjoyed the Agatha Rasin books and though this might be on a simular ilk however its just not. Very much a marmite book you will either love it because you have read other books in the series or hate it.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrago for a digital galley of this book.

Yes, this is a new Miss Seeton book. Will fans of Miss Seeton love it? Almost certainly. However, if you are not necessarily a total fan you might put it in a more modest position on your bookshelf. Certainly it was entertaining in its effort to satirize the small village way of life and the spinster who solves problems even Scotland Yard can't get hold of. But by the time it was finished I had had enough of Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton and her extraordinary ability to work her magic with her writing block and tin of colored pencils. Oh, and her umbrella. Don't let's forget the umbrella.

Secrets, secrets and more secrets permeate this story. In fact people were keeping so many secrets it turned out most people knew the secrets anyway, they just didn't know they knew some of the secrets but not all of them. It did get a little bit crazy there for a while. There was the village versus rival village secret - that's the one the book title is about. Then the Scotland Yard assignment to investigate a secret which the Oracle, Detective Chief Superintendent Delphick, and Detective Sergeant Bob Ranger had to figure out without actually being told what the secret was. Next came the eyes peering out from the plaster wall during the renovation of Summerset Cottage. And the secret the foreigners in the village were looking for. And the secret the motorcycle gang was looking for. And what secret did the drawings of Miss Seeton signify? I was fairly worn out with secrets.

I have read several Miss Seeton stories in the past, all of which I enjoyed. This one was enjoyable also and I'm sure will bring great joy to established fans of the series plus earning the books new readers. You can easily begin your adventures with Miss Seeton here, at number 23, without spoiling any of the earlier novels.

I really wanted to love this book. The setting, the characters, the very nature of the book was something I felt sure I would ignore every menial task for.... but I didn't. I couldn't get into the story at all. It felt disjointed and difficult. I kept losing track of where and what and who and having to go back several pages to re-read. There was humour but it didn't have me laughing out loud. There are such great reviews that I do feel disappointed- and I will read earlier works to see how they compare.

The Miss Seeton series was a joyful discovery for me and I was thrilled that the publishers introduced a brand new book after almost two decades.

I am a fan of period mysteries and English comedy/satire so the character of Miss Seeton is very appealing to me: she solves a problem that confounds the police by sheer accident (or ESP)--it is not her intelligence, or her intuition, it is her knack for making a two-dimensional interpretation of a person or event that is then left for others to suss out the meaning.

These books are not intended to be sophisticated puzzles for the hard-core mystery fan; they are spoofs of village life and clueless spinsters that remind me of adolescent jokes---each one is very similar to the last one--but, somehow they are continue to make us laugh. Miss Seeton's stories don't vary radically from one book to the next, but that is why her loyal readers seek them out. We like the comfort of laughing at the same thing. We like the relationships between the characters and don't need to be surprised by someone's behavior in any given situation. In general, the sameness is the virtue of the books to me, it is not a detractor.

So, although this was not my favorite of the Miss Seeton stories, I was very happy to welcome it to the series and I hope there will be many more. My concern with this particular novel was that the first few chapters were unnecessarily confusing---these books are not intended to challenge the reader--and, initially I was a little bogged down.

NetGalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(I should also say that i live in a climate where a summer day can easily reach 115 degrees so light reading is a seasonal way of life for me---anything "heavier" and I am snoozing all day).

Miss Seeton Quilts the Village by Hamilton Crane, Heron Carvic is the 22nd book in this series and was a delightful afternoon read for me.

This is one of the first cozy mystery series that I read many years ago. I enjoyed it so much that I read everyone of the books that I could find. The cast of characters are engaging and are mostly likable (the Nuts being a couple that are not). But even those characters add a richness to the story. A smoothly paced plot with a murder tied to espionage for Dectective Chief Superintendent Delphick and Detective Sargeant Ranger to solve. There were the usual village hijinks that often made me laugh or roll my eyes. Miss Seeton can be so oblivious to her surroundings - or is she? The lovely little twist at the end with her latest picture was a perfect ending to this cozy myster.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Farrago via NetGalley. All of the above opinions are my own. Thank you Farrago for allowing me to read the book.

This is the first sequel I've read to the original Miss Seton books and it's pulled off very well. The influences of both Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and E.F.Benson's Mapp & Lucia are well to the fore, especially in the daily life of the village and its English eccentric inhabitants.

As ever, Miss Seeton is a delight - trusty brolly at her side!

To be posted on Amazon

3 stars

Miss Seeton has just returned from the wedding of some friends’ son’s marriage. The new wife was very interested in the Bayeau Tapestry. This sets up a desire for a quilt to be made based on the tapestry.

But Miss Seeton begins to see things in the preliminary tapestry drawings that others do not see.

At the same time, Chief Superintendent Delphick was asked to investigate the death of an agent. These are some people of a rather questionable nature, so Delphick is reluctant to decline. So, he is busy and unable to listen to Miss Seeton’s questions.

The local gossips are out in force and speculating like mad about what is going on with Miss Seeton’s investigation. Of course, they’re all off the mark to one degree or another.

This book in the series really didn’t do it for me. It seemed off the mark. Without some of the major characters from previous books in it, the book seemed to feel forced and fell flat. The writing is okay, but muddled while the plotting goes almost nowhere. I’ve read earlier Miss Seeton novels and was disappointed in this one. It simply did not compare to the earlier books.

I want to thank NetGalley and Farrago for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

I suppose that this series will have its fans and that, this being the first new addition for nearly twenty years, those fans will be eager to read the book. I am not a fan, having only read one Miss Seeton before- Starring Miss Seeton- which I found rather twee.

Miss Seeton Quilts the Village is, I think, supposed to be a send-up of the type of British detective novel, set in an English village, which has a spinster investigator helping the police to solve crime.If so, the satire rather passed by me.

I did not find this novel very amusing. I thought it was quite hard-work and pretty boring, considering how many different plot lines there were. I got no sense at all of the personality of Miss Seeton or any of the other characters including the oracular DCS Delphick and his sidekick, DS Ranger.

The village women were all nosey and all wrong in their speculations:that quickly became unfunny.
The running theme of the tapestry, or whatever it was, added nothing but fairly repetitive padding.

There was some espionage, new and old.There was a murder-probably.There were Nazi sympathisers and exiled foreign dictators. There was a strange historic picture and hidden treasure.There were newly-weds and a vaguely aristocratic family.

It all seemed random and rather incoherent. It was only due to a reference in Chapter Four to the death, two or three years earlier, of Russell Thorndike, that I was able to locate the action to 1974/5.

The blurb suggests that fans of Miss Marple, Agatha Raisin and Mapp and Lucia will appreciate this book. I am a fan of all of the books in which those ladies appear and the comparison in this case is odious.If this book had one small part of the careful plotting and dry wit of Christie, the acidity of Beaton or the satire and elegance of Benson, then it would be good. Unfortunately, it has not, and is not.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Farrago for an advance copy of Miss Seeton Quilts the Village, the twenty third novel in Heron Carvic's Miss Seeton series and the fifteenth written by Sarah J. Mason under the pseudonym of Hamilton Crane.

Miss Seeton has just returned from a trip north to attend Nigel Colveden's wedding and visit a friend and is soon involved in the execution of Plummergen's version of the Bayeux Tapestry, an endeavour inspired by a throwaway remark from Nigel's French bride, Louise. In the meantime Chief Superintendent Delphick has been asked by some shady government people to investigate the apparent suicide of a double agent. With ACC Sir Hubert Everleigh caught up, while holidaying, in a South American coup and thus out of action he is forced to comply.

It is twenty years since the last novel in the series was written so I was excited to be asked to read and review this latest edition and it doesn't disappoint. It has a freshness and spark that some of the later novels lacked and a suitably ridiculous plot which had me laughing out loud at some points.

It carries on from where the last 1970s novel left off and has many of the usual characters. There is no role for Mel and Thrudd, Fleet Street journalists extraordinaire, but this is more than made up for with the outlandish theories dreamt by by the village gossips on the flimsiest of evidence and are extremely funny. The chief gossips, The Nuts, who became annoying in later books are back in diluted form and much better for it.

Throughout it all Miss Seeton goes about her business unaware of the speculation around her and embarrassed about her flights of fancy sketches which the police find so useful. Yet again she sets them on the correct course.

I feel that Miss Mason has the balance exactly right in this novel. There is a clever deftness to both the plotting and dialogue and all the characters have a proportionate place. It makes for an excellent read and has left me thirsting for more. As a result I have no hesitation in recommending it.

I'm absolutely delighted by this brand new Miss Seeton mystery. A wonderful cozy series.

This book was just not my cup of tea. I do not publicly post negative reviews.

This title fits in seamlessly with the earlier books in the series. So glad to have Miss Seton's quirky charm back!