Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Sieve and Let Die: A Vintage Kitchen Mystery by Victoria Hamilton. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
Sieve and Let Die: A Vintage Kitchen Mystery
by Victoria Hamilton
Sieve and Let Die: A Vintage Kitchen Mystery
Cozy Mystery
11th in Series
Beyond the Page (October 17, 2023)
Print length : 279 pages
In the new Vintage Kitchen Mystery from the author of A Calculated Whisk, Jaymie’s not sure who to believe when every suspect’s alibi has as many holes as a sieve . . .
Vintage cookware collector Jaymie Müller is stunned when an irate woman accuses her pharmacist friend Val of tampering with her prescription. When more unfounded accusations follow, it seems clear the woman has a personal grudge against Val. But before they can figure out why, Jaymie and Val stumble upon the woman’s dead body on the steps of Val’s pharmacy. Given her altercations with the woman and the location of the body, the police naturally suspect Val.
Jaymie has heard rumors that the victim had become forgetful and erratic, but could that explain her death? And why was Val being framed as her murderer? Determined to find the clues that connect the woman’s strange behavior to her death, Jaymie begins questioning the people in her life—and soon suspects that the culprit is among them. But she’ll have to be careful about who she confronts, because while solving murders is hard work, there’s a killer on the loose who finds committing them all too easy . . .
Includes a vintage recipe!
Author Guest Post: Why I Write What I Write by Victoria Hamilton
You likely, as a reader, have certain genres you read, and other genres that don’t interest you at all. Maybe it’s cozy mysteries and memoirs, or historical mysteries and biographies, or noir mysteries and true crime. Or maybe you’ll read anything that promises to be a fictional mystery, from trad, to hard-boiled, to futuristic, but non-fiction doesn’t interest you at all.
How do we come to our book preferences? I’d be interested in knowing, if any of you care to share, how you came to your own genre reading preferences.
Here’s how I came to mine, and why I write what I do, which is traditional and historical mysteries.
I read a lot as a kid – surprise, surprise – and couldn’t get enough. I read kids books, of course – like Walter Brooks’ Freddy the Pig books – but pretty early I started reading series that were more for grown-ups. I read Gerald Durrell’s books of his years collecting animals for his Jersey zoo, among them and memorably Catch Me a Colobus. I found them fascinating, and probably didn’t distinguish them from fiction, at the time. They were books about animals.
I would read anything, including my first taste of classic literature, a Readers’ Digest condensed version of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. RD did everyone a favor, in my estimation, by slicing out most of the St. John Rivers family part of the story. He was truly the most boring, prosiest, poisonously ‘good’ character in all of literature.
I never had a chance to read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys. My cousin had all the books, but I only spent at most a week per year at her place, and that wasn’t long enough to get hooked. I’ve read a few since but I must say, my reaction is mostly ‘meh’. Shocking, yes?
However, as far as mystery novels go? Everything changed for me the day – I was 12 – my mom thrust into my eager hands an Agatha Christie novel. Something just clicked for me with Agatha. I can’t explain it, but classic literature? Yes, I grew to love and read Jane Austen, Dickens, Edgeworth, Scott, Eliot, Hardy, and many more. But mysteries…. ah, that was where my true love lay. I devoured every single Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy L. Sayers I could find. I haunted used bookstores, even pestering them to let me go down into their spooky basement to root through the boxes of books that hadn’t made it up onto the floor yet. I bought many a moldy Agatha there, and have fond memories.
I next found the books of Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, and something about those two women’s books spoke to me. I have read them all, as well as the humorous books of Joan Hess, the cooking mysteries of Diane Mott Davidson, and hundreds of others.
My journey to a love of historical mysteries was a slower one, more gradual, I would say. I had started reading Regency romances, and appreciated the period for its beauty and style. I then
stumbled upon some Anne Perry ‘Charlotte and Thomas Pitt’ books, (set in the Victoria era – remember how I love Dickens?) as well as Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen series, (Jane Austen is my favorite classic literature author) and they started me on the path to reading historical mysteries. ‘Historical’ does cover a broad range. While I most enjoy the Regency period, I have read books set in Tudor time, Elizabethan, Georgian, Belle Epoque, Gilded Age, and right up to the fifties and sixties. (That’s historical? Yikes!)
So knowing my journey as a reader, and my love of mystery books, you can see why I now write traditional or ‘cozy’ mysteries, and historical mysteries set in the Georgian and Regency eras. I think it gives the old adage ‘write what you know’ a whole new twist. I write what I know, which is that I love traditional and historical mysteries!
How – and when? – did you begin to read your favorite genre?
About Victoria Hamilton
Victoria Hamilton is the pseudonym of nationally bestselling romance author Donna Lea Simpson. Victoria is the bestselling author of four mystery series: the Lady Anne Addison Mysteries, the Vintage Kitchen Mysteries, the Merry Muffin Mysteries, and A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Murder Mysteries. Visit her website at victoriahamiltonmysteries.com.
Author Links:
Webpage: http://www.victoriahamiltonmysteries.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VictoriaHamiltonMysteryAuthor
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/MysteryVictoria – or – @MysteryVictoria
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Victoria-Hamilton/author/B007T7LGAU?ref
Purchase Links Digital – Amazon U.S. – Amazon Canada Barnes & Noble Kobo Smashwords
Paperback Links
Enter the Giveaway
Sieve and Let Die TOUR PARTICIPANTS
October 16 – Baroness Book Trove – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
October 16 – Carla Loves To Read – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
October 17 – Literary Gold – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
October 17 – Bigreadersite – REVIEW
October 18 – Read Your Writes Book Reviews – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
October 19 – #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee – SPOTLIGHT
October 19 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
October 20 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
October 20 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST
October 21 – Lady Hawkeye – RECIPE
October 21 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
October 22 – Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense – AUTHOR GUEST POST
October 22 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
October 23 – Celticlady’s Reviews – RECIPE
October 23 – My Reading Journeys – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
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Thank you so much for hosting me! I hope readers enjoy Sieve and Let Die as much as I did writing it.
You’re welcome! Thank you for guest post! Mysteries are definitely one of my favorite genres!
You took me back a tad bit with the Reader’s Digest comment. For me it was the summertime decisions my siblings and I had to make, math, reading or writing labs during the summertime. I never choose math it was always reading lab. Highlights Magazine every month had hidden objects, stories to read, games and all sorts of age appropriate activities. My siblings and I are stair steps so we shared a subscription. That was our summertime if we didn’t want to go to summer camp, hence my love of reading.
I loved reading Highlights magazine too!
Thanks for sharing!
This looks like an amazing cozy mystery! It’s perfect for the fall season!
This sounds like an interesting book and I also like the cover.
I’m a big fan of Victoria. love her books
Sounds like a great book.
Sounds like a fun series to read.
cute cover
It sounds like we enjoyed reading many of the same authors as we were growing up.
My daughter would enjoy this book
Love the title and cover!