Date with Evil: A delightfully witty and charming mystery set in the Yorkshire Dales perfect for fans of Agatha Raisin and The Thursday Murder Club (The Dales Detective Series Book 8)

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and murder, has become a go to for me for reading slump rescue recommendations, reading clubs, and just getting out of the doldrums in general, and this was to be a culmination of so many different story threads, and Julia Chapman did it! There’s plenty of cosy crime shenanigans to enjoy but at the same time, there are issues of human nature and murder brought to the fore.

The author has brought to life the North Yorkshire landscape and populated it with wonderful characters. There were a few minor disappointments: fiction in general seems to miss out on proofreading and the text has several typos. They get better with each book and we get to see more and more characters that add a lot to the story – old people, a rich guy, questionable characters, all together shady characters, a fun as hell cleaner/maid, and so much more!

With missing washing, produce thefts and inheritance investigations among others they have little time to spare when Mrs Lister visits and insists that her estate agent son, Stuart, is not backpacking abroad and is missing. Les personnages et les intrigues sont bien développés, on s'attache à ce village et à ses habitants. All of the elements of a standard cosy crime novel are present in this latest instalment of the Dales Detective.

Having published a series of novels set in the idyllic French Pyrenees, she has now turned her hand to crime. I'm also so glad the publishers have stuck with Yorkshire's own Emily Sutton as the cover artist, her style is a perfect fit for these stories, whimsical, cosy, and full of love for the dales, great choice! She is also the author of the Dales Detective series which follows the adventures of Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe as they solve cases in the Yorkshire Dales.This one is slightly darker than the previous seven books, but ties up neatly with the baddie *finally* getting caught. From stolen washing to inheritance investigations, Bruncliffe's Dales Detective Agency is being inundated with cases. But with Samson O'Brien still in London helping the Met Police clear his name, and the newly appointed member of the investigations team, Ida Capstick, distracted by her brother George's insistence that their farm is haunted, Delilah Metcalfe is struggling to meet the mounting demands for the agency's services. However, in this case I found myself fairly lost given what was clearly extensive character backstories and plot lines that appear to have been carried over from previous books.

I have enjoyed this series immensely from book one and would say please read the other books before this one as this brings together threads from a few of the previous books. It's cleverly written, with various POVs and the different strands of the story being slowly but steadily woven together. Something that will finally expose the network of evil which has been infiltrating the Dales town over the past decade, and in doing so place Delilah in the utmost danger.Samson is in London helping the Met, so Delilah is left to run the agency with newly minted detective Ida Capstick. I owed recommend starting this series with book 1, as each book builds up to the tremendous climax in this one. Its distinctive landscape and way of life provide the setting for her latest set of novels, the Dales Detective series. As usual, the secondary characters are highly entertaining, and many play an important role in this volume.