I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to American thrillers! Sorry, not sorry. I have just finished 3 books by Anna Penrose, and they were absolutely spectacular. I think my favorite thing about them is the main character, Malachite Peck, is a woman closer to my age than any other character I’ve read in a long while. She’s NOT an old lady. She wears her silver hair like a badge of honor. She’s also a felon just out of a 5-year prison stay. She hasn’t killed anyone (yet). Still, she has a mind like Sherlock Holmes, which is a good thing, because not long after moving to a sleepy Cornish village to start her new life, a body is found plastered inside the wall of her new bookshop (yet another of my favorite things about her…she’s living my dream!). In each of the three books, Mal is drawn into a murder mystery where the suspects are wily but not clever enough to outsmart her. She finds friends and people who don’t judge her. She also runs afoul of her local Detective Inspector, who is a right idiot and as misogynistic a man as you might expect to find in the police force. She also finds companionship, and, dare I say it…love. Anyway, I cannot recommend these books enough, especially if you enjoy audiobooks. The reader is fabulous! The books are listed below in order.