A review by thebooktrail88
Date with Malice by Julia Chapman

5.0

Visit the locations in the novel Welcome to Bruncliffe, Yorkshire


Despite the calamities and strange old people who live in Bruncliffe, oh and despite the fact it’s a fictional setting, I really want to live there! Delilah and Samson are the funniest twosome I’ve come across in fiction for a long while. All wrapped up with witty Yorkshire asides and a pot of Yorkshire tea brewing over the page…

Samson has a sense of humour to rival the next man – He wants to move on , away from Bruncliffe, back to London, where there sill be “No more old ladies making wild accusations and no more smelly farmers”

A series of crimes involving an old age people’s home might not sound exciting, but in the hands of Julia Chapman it is! Funny, dark and quite poignant in places, no character is your cliched typical old person but they have some very interesting characters there! Samson knows the place well as he has connections there himself…a nice interesting thread to the story.

There’s a strong sense of Yorkshire’s charms all the way through the story- humour, landscape, farming history and more but it’s the characters who shine – each delicately crafted and ruffed up before appearing on the pages. I could see them all clearly, scowls and all, and it’s a cracking mystery in this one – go Samson!

With the Christmas overtones, it’s a nice one to read when the nights get even chillier and if it snows like in the book – so much the better!