Dead Tired
ISBN: 9781804180938
Description
Alice has made the most of her maternity leave, becoming simultaneously a proud mum (well, a mum, at least) and accidental amateur sleuth. With her son, Jack, somehow a year old already, she is keen to continue to keep him alive and maybe finally catch up on some sleep ... if she's lucky. When an opportunity presents itself in the unexpected form of a sit-in protest, Alice and her friends willingly chain themselves to trees and settle in for some overdue rest - not the most comfortable arrangement ever, but at this point they'll take whatever they can get.
Reviewed on 9th June 2024
It’s sequel time, and we return to the sleepy Cotswold village that Alice moved to before Jack was born, and which now even the characters refer to as being like Midsomer.
I really like the bunch of characters and the sense of humour that the narration brings to them all. It must be hard to work with a large cast of main characters, all in a similar situation (early motherhood) and yet make them all stand out distinctly. I’ve definitely read a cosy crime that couldn’t achieve that at all, but this does so with style.
I also love the way the characters lives develop, we get to revisit various other characters from the first book too, and a rich new cast are introduced as well to fill out the new plot. Creating characters is clearly something that Ailes has put a ton of effort and talent into.
And the plot is great too - there’s a bunch of stuff going on, loads to investigate, clues all over the place, and enough that you think you maybe have worked some stuff out but without being confident enough to not want to race to the end and find out.
This was a two-day read for me, aided by two long train journeys, but also demonstrating how much it motivated me to focus on it.
