Could it be that I have a soft spot for Miss Seeton because she is a retired art teacher? Well, maybe, but I do enjoy her stories. I think Hamilton Crane must also sketch, as the descriptions of Miss Seeton’s sketches and her reactions to them ring true. In Miss Seeton Flies High Miss S and friends have three different mysteries to solve, and the excitement of a bond win, and a hot air balloon raffle prize. I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair review. I found it to be an engaging story with likable characters. I have read a few books featuring Emily Seeton and have enjoyed each. They do not need to be read in order.

I love how the author is able to have twists and turns in the story but it is also sprinkled with humor. The element of Miss Seaton's special talent is outstanding.

Miss Seeton cracks the case again - a brilliant series of very light, easily readable crime capers. This time Miss Seeton leaves home and still picks up whodunit

I've read the original Miss Seeton books, but then stopped not expecting other writers to be able to keep up the standard, which I felt had dropped in the last one anyway. This book though tells me how wrong I could be.

It is not only of the same standard, but, in my opinion better than the originals.Hamilton Crane appears to have a very clear view of Miss Seeton, which is close to my own.

What a lovely and enjoyable cozy mystery!
It was a lot of fun to read, with a great and humorous heroine and a great cast of characters.
The plot was really good and kept me guessing till the end. This book is a page turner and couldn't put it down.
I will go and fetch the other instalment in this series.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to Farrago and Netgalley for the ARC

Welcome back, Miss Seeton! I am so pleased to see this series revived and by one of its original authors. The deft touch, subtle (and not so subtle) humor, and twisted approach to crime solving continues to provide pleasure. And at this point in my life it is fun to revisit the Mod Generation in all its long haired, flared trousered (do NOT use the word "pants" in British English--they will picture you in undergarments!), flower powered glory. Miss Seeton's drawings provide clues to solving not one but three mysteries, and we are able to explore the Glastonbury countryside, home to King Arthur and Camelot. Whether or not you've read any of this series (they all stand alone, although some of the side characters develop greater depth as you read more of the tales), you will thoroughly enjoy yourself.

One of the things I love about this series is its timelessness, it's often hard to tell just when a book takes place. However this books a delightful exception and not just because it has a definite time as its setting - late 1976. It also takes place almost entirely outside Miss Seeton's village in western England, mostly in Glastonbury.

A decision is made to have the Christmas play be King Arthur & Miss Seeton goes to Glastonbury to gather ideas. On the criminal side a young playboy has been kidnapped & is suspected of being held in the West Country.

Delightful capers ensue, Miss Seeton draws, and crimes are solved. It's another wonderful addition to the series.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the Miss Seeton books I have read, but I'm afraid that I didn't find this one quite so good. It has its moments, but Miss Seeton herself is a slightly tangential character for quite a lot of the book, and it is only when she is the subject of the narrative that the book has the charm of many of its predecessors.

There is a long, long set-up involving a possible kidnapping near Glastonbury and the inheritance shenanigans of a rather unconvincing family in the same area, during which Miss Seeton is a minor, almost unrelated character. In addition it all seemed uncharacteristically laboured and even rather clunky at times, so having slogged through about a third of the book (around 100 pages in old money) I came close to giving up. Fortunately, at this point Miss Seeton herself becomes the focus as she takes a brief holiday in Glastonbury and is her usual delightful self. "Hamilton Crane" also gives a lovely portrait of Glastonbury in 1976 (I knew it a little around then as I lived in both Bath and Bristol and visited sometimes), and captures the blend of ghastly nonsense and endless shops selling little figurines of Merlin with the undoubted beauty and sense of spirituality of the area.

Later, the book again reverts mainly to police activity and some pretty thinly-stretched deductions from Miss Seeton's pictures, even making the very generous allowances I'm happy to apply to this series. As a whole, then, I found it a bit of a disappointment. This came as a surprise because the Miss Seeton series under all three authors including recent additions by "Hamilton Crane" has been characterised by excellent writing and a lovely lightness of touch, which seemed to be rather dimmed in Miss Seeton Flies High. I will, of course look forward to a return to form (and hopefully to The Village) in the next book, but I'm afraid I can only give this one a very qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Farrago Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

MissEss is back for another cosy murder mystery,

This is my second Miss Seeton book, which I haven't read in order, however they can definitely be read as stand alone.

Whilst I did enjoy the book and some parts were amusing it was not laugh out loud funny. I enjoyed the different plot lines however sometimes it got a little confusing. I also found the very in-depth Arthurian mystery sections of the book a little tedious and as I had no interest in this topic I did find myself skim reading quite a lot of the book. I would give this book 3.5 stars.

Miss Seeton is the heroine of a long series of humorous cozy mysteries. She's a former art teacher, now grey-haired and retired, who faithfully does her yoga every morning. This discipline keeps Miss Seeton exceptionally spry, which permits her to have madcap adventures and help Scotland Yard solve crimes. Miss Seeton is usually oblivious to her own hijinks, however, and thinks she's just living the routine life of a well-mannered older lady.

The original author of the series was Heron Carvic, and - after his death - other writers carried on. This story, the 23rd in the series, was penned by Hamilton Crane.

The books can be read as standalones with no problem.

********.

Miss Emily Seeton is a retired art teacher who lives a quiet life in the English village of Plummergen. However, unlike most elderly ladies, Miss Seeton is on retainer to Scotland Yard. MissEss, as she's known to the Yard, has a knack for inadvertently bashing criminals with her umbrella, earning her the moniker 'The Battling Brolly.' Moreover, Miss Seeton has a supernatural ability to sketch felons and their crimes - and these 'doodles' (as she calls them) provide important clues to the police.

Miss Seeton's contact at the Yard is Chief Superintendent Delphick, known as 'The Oracle.' In this book, Delphick - at the request of his colleagues - 'consults' MissEss about three crimes: a kidnapping, distribution of marijuana, and a murder.

The book, set in the 1970s, starts off with glimpses into two families.

In Plummergen, Nigel Colvedon - the scion of Sir George and Lady Colvedon - has returned home with his French bride - and is living with the folks while his new house is built. Nigel is caring for the sheep on the Colvedon estate when a ewe kicks him in the face and gives him a black eye. This leads to a lively conversation about sheep when Nigel visits Miss Seeton.

Further west, in Glastonbury, four Callender siblings - Bill, Crispin, Octavia, and Valentine - are having a meeting. They recently inherited 'Callender's Coats' from their father, and are discussing expanding the business. For this purpose, they'd like to take back a parcel of land being used for sheep by their poor relations - a matter that's governed by official regulations. Bill and Crispin are very involved with the factory, while Val is a professional weaver and Octavia owns a bookstore. This plotline is threaded through the entire book.

Back home in Plummergen, Miss Seeton is asked to design scenery for the Amateur Dramatic Society's Christmas pantomime, which will feature a play about King Arthur. MissEss wants her Arthurian sketches to be authentic, so she plans a trip to Glastonbury, which has strong ties to the King Arthur legend.

Before Miss Seeton embarks on her journey, she's visited by Chief Superintendent Delphick, who tells her that Christy Garth - the playboy son of wealthy Caleb Garth - has been kidnapped. Delphick shows MissEss a photo of Christy, and asks her to make a sketch - hoping her drawing furnishes clues to the young man's whereabouts. MissEss's rendering turns out to be a quirky cartoon of grinning sheep.

The next day, the narcotics squad contacts Delphick with a report of rampaging sheep in Glastonbury. It appears that drug dealers left town in a hurry, leaving behind marijuana bales that were consumed by the marauding (but happy) animals.

Unaware of this brouhaha, Miss Seeton makes her way to Glastonbury, where she checks into a small guesthouse. Glastonbury is a 'hippie' town with a mystical atmosphere and a scent of incense on the breeze. The men in the area tend to sport long hair, flared trousers, and sandals; and the women often don caftans and strings of beads. Unlike Plummergen, the Glastonbury shops sell amulets, star charts, Tarot cards, crystal balls, cauldrons, books about witchcraft, occult candles, statuettes of wizards and elves, costumes, robes, pointed hats, and glittering crowns.

Miss Seeton is captivated by the atmosphere of Glastonbury and - after settling into her room - starts her sightseeing activities. This includes visiting the Abbey ruins where (mythical) King Arthur is supposedly buried and climbing Glastonbury Tor, which has a ruined church tower at the summit.

While she's walking around, MissEss meets people who lecture her about the local legends. This is an opportunity for Hamilton Crane to include A LOT of information about King Arthur and his Knights as well as Glastonbury folklore. For example, legend has it that the ancients mapped the constellations of the Zodiac (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces) into the town's landscape.....and that Glastonbury Tor is an entrance to Annwn, the original Celtic Underworld.

Miss Seeton also wins a raffle, and gets a free ride in a hot air balloon. This is an opportunity for fellow balloonists to point out the Zodiac and other mythical sites on the ground, including a topographical replica of one of King Arthur's swords. (Unfortunately - hard as she tries - MissEss can't make out any of this. 😉)

I'd estimate that about a fifth of the book is devoted to this mystical/legendary/Arthurian information. I found this material tedious...but fans of historical fiction might like it.

While Miss Seeton is gallivanting around, Scotland Yard is trying to find Christy Garth (the kidnap victim), round up the marijuana growers who got the sheep high, and solve the murder of a tourist who was killed in Glastonbury. Delphick manages to get MissEss to draw some sketches, which turn out to be prophetic, and everything is resolved by the end of the book.

The Miss Seeton books are meant to be humorous cozy mysteries, and this book is amusing. One scene, where a rural constable thinks Miss Seeton in one of Scotland Yard's most wanted, is quite funny. However, the Miss Seeton novels by Hamilton Crane are not as laugh out loud funny as those written by the original author, Heron Carvic. If the series continues, I hope Miss Seeton goes back to her former zany antics.

This is an enjoyable cozy mystery, suitable for a few hours of light reading.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Hamilton Crane), and the publisher (Farrago) for a copy of the book.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R29UT10GIF6GYS/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8

I have a particular fondness for a good mystery, and especially one with a female sleuth. Miss Emily Dorothea Seaton is no ordinary sleuth; she is a gifted artist who produces sketches of strange proportions when asked to consider a particular case by Scotland Yard, and the skills of Detective Superintendent Delphick - aka The Oracle - lead to his deciphering these pictures.

In this novel, Miss Seeton takes a trip to Somerset to research the legend of King Arthur for a village project. This beautiful area is done full justice by author Hamilton Crane and anyone considering a short break may well be tempted to head in this direction! When the police reach out for help with their latest case, Miss Seeton unwittingly leads them to a breakthrough in another - in the area where she has spent her holiday. There are a total of three cases in this book, and none of them are straightforward, but each and every one is incredibly enjoyable.

Like Agatha Christie before her, Hamilton Crane creates stories where you need to keep your wits about you as even the smallest detail can be the key to solving the puzzle. These stories are intricately designed and so much fun to read! Each time I have one in my reading list I seem to speed up to get to it faster. It's a series I recommend without hesitation to all lovers of a darn good mystery.

My grateful thanks once again to publishers Farrago for approving my copy via NetGalley. This is my honest, original and unbiased review.

Miss Seeton has a knack for being in the right place at the right time — even if it’s invariably inadvertent. So it is in Miss Seeton Flies High, where Miss Emily Seeton, a kindly spinster and retired art teacher, ends up in Gloucestershire on a holiday just as Scotland Yard beings investigating a brutal kidnapping.

In other Miss Seeton books, the poor spinster is left looking like a naïve fool; however, ever since the reboot that began with last year’s Miss Seeton Quilts the Village, the new author (writing as Hamilton Crane) sprinkles in all of the sly send-ups that readers expect from Miss Seeton novels while still respecting her intelligence. Miss Seeton Flies High also pokes gentle fun at the New Age pretensions that characterized the 1970s. Readers will love being reunited with that grand lady, Miss Seeton.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Farrago in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t understand how I’ve managed to miss such a wonderful series for so long. But at long last I’ve discovered it, at book no. 23 in the series, so I’ve got a lot of reading to do to catch up.
The books works perfectly as a standalone story. The long-standing characters and their relationships soon become very plain and so there’s no confusion about what’s going on. Miss Seeton, or Miss Ess as the computer insists on labelling her as, works as an artist for Scotland Yard. She has a sixth sense that appears in her pictures. She can’t see it, but The Oracle, Superintendent Delphick, knows how to translate her drawings and find the clues. He needs Miss Seeton with her sketchpad and umbrella wherever there’s a mystery that needs solving.
Miss Seeton is delightfully polite and apparently harmless, but she’s quite a force to be reckoned with. She’s clever and witty and courageous. In this story, for example, she heads up to Glastonbury Tor on her own, encounters a range of eccentrics but deals admirably with them all, and also goes up in a hot air balloon. Nothing fazes this elderly lady, although I think she’s a tiny bit scared of Martha, her housekeeper!
This is a busy book with three plot lines going on – a kidnap, a murder and a missing drugs stash – and they all weave themselves firmly around our demure heroine. Her drawings provide clues to help in solving them all. All the characters we meet are rounded and fascinating, and with the hippie, late 1970s setting in Glastonbury for much of the book we get to see some alternative interpretations of the local landscape and find out a lot about the Zodiac. All very interesting.
This is a quirky, fun novel. It’s a pleasure to read and has you chuckling every few pages at the wit and the bizarreness of the situations that Miss Seeton continually finds herself in.
The cover is classy and eye-catching and all in all the book is a total delight.

Miss Seeton is a retired art teacher whose subconscious -- or perhaps a supernatural source of insight -- creeps into her drawings. The police, led by Chief Superintendent Delphick, need only to interpret the cryptic clues in her sketches and their cases are cracked.

So when Miss Seeton heads to Glastonbury to soak up Arthuric legends for her designs for a school play... at the same time that the scion of an important family goes missing... it looks like a perfect opportunity for Delphick and his colleagues to pick up some mystical help.

Mid 20th century fun with hot air balloons, astrology, and plenty of sheep combine in a fun, light hearted, well-written mystery.

I’m so fond of the Miss Seeton books. What a delight to get a new one with our old friends the Oracle, Bob Ranger, the Colvedens providing background to Emily Seeton’s oblivious detecting! Sheep, hot-air balloons, and Arthurian legends form the backdrop to drugs, kidnapping and land steals in this new edition of “Miss Seeton Flies High."

If you are a fan of the Miss Seeton series, as written by Hamilton Crane, aka Sarah J. Mason, then you may enjoy this book. This is the sixteenth novel that Crane has produced for the Miss Seeton series so this reviewer must surmise that they are popular with a particular audience. Although billed as a “cozy mystery novel, full of humour” it is neither cozy nor humourous.

Miss Seeton has a strange power of being able to draw intuitive sketches that help the police solve mysteries. Her favourite detective, or his side kick, then attempt to interpret her esoteric sketches to solve the crime. Personally, I find the entire premise ridiculous yet I would be willing to over look that if the book made any sense. Sadly, it was just a mumble jumble mixture of unrelated plot lines of which only one was ever resolved, and not very satisfactorily at that.

This Miss Seeton is an embarrassment to the many formidable, elderly British female detectives found throughout modern fiction. Do no read this book!

For fans of series fiction, like myself, more is more. I enjoy lots of titles in the series and a certain sameness in the plots and action is expected and doesn't disappoint me. What disappoints me is IF the book veers off course from what I've expected, or in essence, what I want to experience in the series.

Spending time with Miss Seeton and her friends from Scotland Yard is why I read the Miss Seeton books. MISS SEETON FLIES HIGH was somewhat slow in delivering that pleasure. It was not until mid-way through the book that the reader had the fun of trying to sort out Miss Seeton's "inspired sketches" or to share in her adventures.
The setup in this book was a bit tedious for me, and far too lengthy for what it ultimately delivered, but in the end Miss Ess and her colleagues delivered some satisfaction for this reader.

I am an unabashed fan of this series and the "set pieces" of Miss Seeton and her wacky drawings never grows old for me. I would encourage the current custodians of the series to stay true to the original author's vision for the books and keep the humor alive and the village activity central to the novels.

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

Miss Seeton Flies High (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 23) by Hamilton Crane (Author),‎ Heron Carvic (Author)

The popularity of the Miss Seeton Mystery series is well documented in numerous positive reader reviews, web pages devoted to Miss Seeton and the steadily increasing number of books by the series' three authors, writing in turn.

Though the 23rd in the Miss Seeton series, this was my first exposure to Miss Seeton. As a new NetGalley reviewer, I made an error requesting it and was unable to figure out how to cancel or return it.

Once I realized that the story is set in the 1970’s and understood the premise, that Miss Seeton’s sixth sense about crime, manifested in cryptic drawings, provides Scotland Yard with new and valuable avenues to investigate, the appeal of the series became more obvious.

The book was a light hearted pleasant read, with accurate and interesting descriptions of locations and story background details, for example about Romney sheep. It is not "my cup of tea" however, so I am hoping this form will not require that I either rate my level of recommendation or further share this rview.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of Miss Seeton Flies High for free via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. #MissSeetonFliesHigh #NetGalley

This is a delightful read but it is too "cozy" for my liking. Miss Seeton possess the psychic power, and possibly her innate sensitivities "to see" the truth make her THE person the Scotland Yard turns to for "advice." A retired art teacher, she reveals or supplies the hints to solve the cases through her aimless doodles, or abstract "arts." The few cases that are loosely related to one another enriched the entire reading experience.

Miss Seeton is such a lovable character. I might consider to further explore other titles from the series.