Mrs Sidhu is a caterer and also an amateur detective in her spare time .
She is catering for midsummer fete and that’s where things take a turn for the worst and the murders come thick and fast .
I wanted to like this much more than I did .
The story is places seemed to be contrived and at times confusing .
This has all the elements of a great book but is slightly lacking in its execution.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK.

I do love a good cosy mystery .. and this one is right up my street!

Mrs Sidhu is a caterer - and amateur sleuth; she can't help getting involved! Having upset a lot of people she is banished to the kitchen so decides to try for the private chef vacancy at an exclusive celebrity retreat. However, when a dead body turns up, Mrs Sidhu just can't avoid getting involved ...

This is a delightful mystery, full of intrigue and bursting with humour. Quite often with a new series, it takes me time to get 'bedded in' but I felt as if I knew Mrs Sidhu from the very beginning. So much going on, this one entertained from first to last and left me with a smile on my face and a sigh of satisfaction. Can't wait til the next one = and I'm enjoying the new series of these mysteries on the Drama channel. Suk Pannu has created a cracking series which I will be very happy to follow. 5*.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.

I was sent a copy of Mrs Sidhu’s ‘Dead and Scone’ by Suk Pannu to read and review by NetGalley. This is a very entertaining cosy crime – or should I say cosy ‘culinary’ crime thriller as it is advertised. I have never listened to the Radio 4 series that was the forerunner of this novel but I will certainly be watching the new TV series, Mrs Sidhu Investigates, after reading this book. I liked the characters and enjoyed the style of writing. With great descriptions, both of characters and place, and not forgetting the evocative and tempting foodstuffs that often made an appearance. This was an engaging and very readable novel with lots of potential culprits and a fantastic relationship between the protagonist, Mrs Sidhu, with the long suffering Detective Inspector Burton. An easy but satisfying read.

I really struggled to get into this one and I am not too sure why! It sounded like it would be right up my street, but sadly I just couldn't click with it.

Mrs Sidhu has fallen to her lowest ebb. When her last big catering job had gone wrong, Mr Varma stepped in to help her. Making Aubergine Bhajis. Day in and day out. She is bored senseless. When she receives a phone call telling her it is an emergency she goes straight to Benham House. She is sent to explain to Mrs Calman that her scones are not good enough for the fete the following week. However she discovers her body instead. Her friend DCI Burton is on the case, but will he take notice of her insights. Meanwhile her sister in law has arrived from India, a woman who always makes her feel inferior. Will this visit be any different?
An enjoyable read.

After a few pages of this book I wasn’t sure whether to bother continuing - but I’m very glad that I did! When you get past the rather ominous Indian Auntie stereotyping the characters start to jump from the page and the writing had me laughing out loud at times. So glad I continued to read!

Absolutely loved it! If you are a fan of cosy mysteries then this is the book for you. Such a clever mystery and I have to admit, I didn’t work it out! One thing I had guessed, but not straight away. With a good plot and well written characters, I highly recommend this book. Thank you #netgalley

The book has all the right ingredients but fumbles in its execution. The solving of the mystery is quite convoluted, although I did appreciate that Mrs Sidhu is not portrayed as an all-seeing, omnipotent amateur detective who can immediately see through the layers of deception and reach the truth that the police fail to find. I also did like the dynamics of her personal life and its interplay with her work, both cooking and detecting.

I am intrigued enough by the characters and setting that I will check out the radio drama and the tv series that has recently launched.

Mrs Sidhu is a caterer who, through almost no fault of her own, has descended into the hellish circle of making nothing but aubergine bhajis for a cash and carry business. Desperate to reclaim something of a life, she applies for a job handling the food for a posh rehab centre slash wellness retreat for the rich and famous. However, she’s not even started the job when one of the therapists is found dead in the local village. As something of an amateur sleuth, of course Mrs Sidhu – everyone’s Indian Auntie – is going to get involved!

Mrs Sidhu started life in a radio production, and that there is a lot of backstory to the character is apparent in this first book. I can see where this would be a good thing, but given my complete lack of knowledge about the character at all, it did leave me wondering if I’d missed a book or more. Yes, it’s nice that there is depth and history, but I felt that the mentions of past cases and the relationship with the detective could have been better presented rather than leaving me feeling a little lost.

However, we have all the ingredients – pun intended – for a cosy mystery. Quiet little English village (complete with fete), the big, posh house central to the story, and then a sudden murder that starts the unravelling of all sorts of secrets behind the quaint cottage curtains! Right from the beginning reading this I could picture a Sunday teatime television drama of it all – and to my amazement I was spot on! Mrs Sidhu Investigates starts on UK TV this very week!!

I’m very much looking forward to that, and I think it might help make the character more… something. She’s a hoot, she really is, but at the same time I felt that perhaps there was a little too much reliance on already knowing more from the radio productions? Everything was there, it just didn’t maybe quite feel organic, or allowed enough room to be?

Still, the story is told with a huge amount of humour – toilet bhajis aside, that didn’t work as well for me as I assume was meant – even as the murder-y events turn quite dark. There are plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing, and a large cast of possible suspects and other ne’er-do-wells as the plot barrels through red herrings and other cooking disasters.

Overall, this was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I wanted to like it a whole lot more than I ended up doing, and it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why it didn’t quite gel for me. Still, very much looking forward to seeing the wonderful Meera Syal portray the character on screen, and I genuinely think another book (or three or four) could seriously settle into being a great cosy series, once these few growing pains as we transition into three different media (!) are smoothed out.

A familiar plot and setting that was made different with the addition of Mrs Sidhu and her ways. I did laugh when she set up an office in the toilet that was an example of what I found odd - seemingly set pieces to bring laughs and then the plot continued as normal.
I understand this was a play or radio show and I think it reads a bit like one.
I feel a novel should have more flesh on its bones.

Parts of this book are really engaging and hilarious, and then the flow stuttered and my attention drifted. I wanted to love the whole book, but the writing is patchy which was disappointing. Other readers may find the story more gripping than I did.

So I really struggled with this one

I was not aware that the character has a radio following so read completely blind maybe someone with that knowledge might find it more enjoyable.

I found it dull, it failed to engage me and it was a real slog and that I was forever waiting for it to end.

On Midsummers day, 1997, Wiliam Mackie, founder of The E-cult, sacrificed Justin and Sandra Pollock then disappeared. The village of Benham, where this took place, recovered from this event and by now is a picture-postcard spot, preparing for the annual Midsummer festivities, including a Bring-and-Buy sale, Raffle, Carnival and Fête on the Green and Scones (with Cream and Jam). Mrs Sidhu, chef and caterer has been hired to provide the latter, as well as catering for the staff and clients (aka patients) at the Benham House Retreat. She has a history of ‘helping’ the police solve murders but is not thinking about such things, her mind being occupied by Mr Varma, her martinet of a boss from whom she has temporarily escaped, her hapless teenage son, Tez, and an unwelcome visit from her sister-in-law Daljeet (the dalek). Unfortunately, Dr Wendy Calman, one of the therapists at the Retreat, manages to get herself murdered and it looks like Mackie has returned (tricky since he has been officially dead for many years). Mrs Sidhu links up with her old ‘friend’ DI Burton and commences to ‘help’ the investigation.
This is billed as a cosy crime, based on the comedic writing, although the murder scenes are not treated this way. The characters of Sidhu and Burton were originally created for a radio series (with which I was unfamiliar so have had a quick listen on the web). It isn’t necessary to know the previous events because the book works well as a standalone. However, I think the light-hearted, tongue in cheek style probably works better when heard rather than read (I see a first series has also been released on Acorn TV). The plot is complicated, partly because there is a lot of leaping off to the domestic sub-plots, and partly because Mrs Sidhu sometimes jump-cuts between scenes, a technique which works less well in text than it does on the screen or radio. Apart from some nuances I was not surprised by the dénouement, but it was a pleasant enough read overall.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

I am on the Blog Tour for this book on 24 October so my review will be on my blog then.

The writing style was clever and involved. You really needed to have your wits about you to keep up with everything that was going on. Every time you thought that the mystery was solved, there was always something that wasn't quite adding up.

The story is split into 4 parts, with each part then split further into chapters. Each part title page has a quote from Mrs Sidhu's Memoires which was interesting. The first part starts off with a prologue then has numbered chapters. The other parts start off with a chapter dedicated to Midsummers Day in 1997, before having numbered chapters.

The chapters themselves were fairly long so you got a good chunk of the story before moving on. There was an interesting flow to the book. Due to the twists and turns there was a circular feel to it.

The characters were excellent. They had a number of layers to them which added to the mystery. I loved the way the main character tried to work out the layers to these characters in an effort to solve the mystery. She did amuse me.

The characters also gave you something to think about. This added that extra something to the story as a whole.

Lastly the settings. I enjoyed reading about the retreat and the surrounding village. Together they made an excellent backdrop to the story and helped to add to the mystery.

Overall an enjoyable read, full of twists and turns with an amusing main character. I do feel that the main character really pulled the story together and made me want to keep on reading.

Entertaining and I liked the food references but overly long in places and a bit contrived in others. Good characters, would work well on the radio.

I do like a cosy crime mystery and this one was especially good. I loved the characters and enjoyed learning about Mrs Sidhu. It kept me turning the pages.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

The premise of this, cosy, culinary crime with an Indian Aunty amateur detective appealed to me. I'm not familiar with the radio show and don't know whether it would help to be. Perhaps I have read too much cosy crime, or perhaps I wasn't in the right mood, but I struggled with this.

In particular, I found Mrs Sidhu difficult to get a sense of, she felt very remote; the supporting characters, some of whom I struggled to keep track of, felt no clearer. There is humour and a sense of menace, but I didn't find flow in the writing and didn't feel engrossed in the book. Sorry, not for me.

This is a debut novel, the character of Mrs Sidhus already has a following on Radio, but this is an unknown to me.
Billed as a cosy murder mystery, I’m afraid this didn’t work for me. The story felt disjointed and was overly complicated by too many stereotypical characters. These people weren’t those that made me care a great deal about them, they were shallow and self centred. There wasn’t a great flow to the narrative, it did read more like a radio script.
By the time I had finished the book, I was still unsure about the motives for the murder, and certainly was no wiser about the central character, Mrs Sidhus, her age or her background.
My thanks go to Netgalley and the publishers Harper Collins UK for my advance digital copy, freely given in exchange for my honest review.
Only a two star rating I’m afraid, it really didn’t gel with me.
I will leave reviews to Goodreads and Amazon UK at a later date.

Cosy mystery can be hard to do right - and for me, this one didn’t quite hit the mark. It felt disjointed and staccato, I’m still not sure quite what happened at the end, and the characters felt a bit flat and either unbelievable or cookie cut out. I could see it being a series, but sadly not one I think I’d be pursuing.

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

Mrs Sidhu is a caterer who inadvertently gets involved in a murder investigation at an expensive therapy centre. It turns out this is not her first case, much to the consternation of DI Burton, who is leading the police investigation. I wondered if this was a sequel but I think the backstory comes from a radio play. Mrs Sidhu is, by her own admittance, very nosy, and this gets her into some dangerous situations. At times it seems she is getting involved in police work to get away from her employer and her sister-in-law who is visiting from India. This was an enjoyable rcosy crime story and Mrs Sidhu is great, and at times, exasperating character.
Thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the ARC.