In the entertaining sequel to The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, Miller onceagain explores the dark underbelly of the antiques trade. Spunky 47-year-old Freya Lockwood and her vivacious aunt Carole have recently inherited Crockleford Antiques from the late Arthur Crockleford in the English village of Little Meddington. In addition to running Arthur’s shop, Freya and Carole carry on Arthur’s work exposing the black-market trade in art and antiquities. To that end, Freya accepts an invitation to serve as an in-house expert for an antiques-themed cruise from Cyprus to Jordan—an engagement she assumes Arthur had agreed to before his unexpected death. While onboard, her true mission is to ferret out the identity of a mysterious dealer known only as The Collector, who heads an international thieving syndicate. It proves a difficult task, considering that the ship is awash with double-dealers, fraudsters, and at least one killer, the latter of whom raises the stakes of Freya’s sleuthing from securing stolen goods to preventing murder. Readers steeped in the antiques world will be delighted by Miller’s robust knowledge of the trade, and Freya remains an appealing protagonist. This series continues to deliver.
Miller’s winning debut exposes the dark underbelly of the antiques trade. Forty-something Freya Lockwood is facing a personal crisis: her daughter has gone off to college, and her ex-husband has put the house where she’s lived for many years up for sale. While bracing for an inevitable eviction, Freya receives word that Arthur Crockleford, an antiques dealer in the English village of Little Meddington, has died and left his business to her and her aunt Carole. Twenty years earlier, Freya was Arthur’s partner in tracking down valuable antiquities, but an incident on their final trip together led her to break with Arthur and leave the profession. After Arthur’s funeral, Freya and Carole are given a cryptic letter in which Arthur asks Freya to track down an unnamed “item of great value.” If she does so, he promises, she will get her former life and career back. Following Arthur’s clues, Freya slowly comes to realize she’s also on the trail of his murderer. Miller nails the pace and mood of a good mystery on her first try, and Freya is a hugely appealing protagonist. Readers will be clamoring for a sequel. Agent: Hannah Todd, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Feb.)
Making a killing on Antiques Roadshow crime novel
Antiques Roadshow, the sedate Sunday evening show where the frisson comes from a collector finding their trinket is actually a treasure, has now inspired a much more deadly drama.
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, born of the author C.L. Miller’s love of the BBC1 series, is the latest example of a trend for “cosy crime” novelists to take inspiration from the small screen. It will be one of the hot books at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week and was sold this month to the publishing house Pan MacMillan in a three-book deal with a six-figure advance.
Cosy crime has become one of the most popular and lucrative sub-genres in publishing, largely due to the success of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Shows referenced in other series include Strictly Come Dancing, Love Island and The Great British Bake-Off.
“Half my submissions are now cosy crime,” said Ben Willis, publishing director for crime and thrillers at Bonnier Books. “On an international level it works really nicely to combine these with a nod to the television shows to take advantage of the fact that Americans … are lapping up Love Island and Bake Off.”
But Sir Ian Rankin, the author of 29 Inspector Rebus novels, said the police detective genre is “dying”, replaced by cosy crime books and “psychological domestic noirs”.
Rankin, 62, said Osma had “caught the zeitgeist” because readers want to be “comforted by the notion that ordinary people can make a difference, can solve problems”. The author told The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival: “The crime novel keeps evolving, because new writers come on board who are: a) dealing with the fears of a contemporary audience, which of course keeps changing; and b) finding fresh ways of doing the technical telling of stories.”
Miller’s debut, to be published in 2024, follows Freya, a young woman whose antique-dealer mentor dies in suspicious circumstances. It culminates in an antique convention in Suffolk, where everyone is a suspect.
Miller, 43, wrote the novel in consultation with her mother, Judith, 71, a collector and expert who appears on Antiques Roadshow. “The idea came from me telling my mum I wanted to write a crime novel,” she said. “And I asked her, ‘What antique would you kill for?’”
Cosy up: escapist reads for every armchair detective
Think Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building rather than anything gruesome or terrifying.
Richard Osman used to be known as that nice bloke off the telly. Now, with three novels in the record-breaking Thursday Murder Club series under his belt, he’s quite simply a literary phenomenon. The series, which falls neatly into the ‘cosy’ end of the crime fiction spectrum, is a bout a group of retirees who solve murders together. The third instalment, The Bullet That Missed, published last month by Penguin, sold 127,743 copies in its first week on sale.
And cosy crime continues to be one of the hottest literary trends around if the recent Frankfurt Book Fair is anything to go by. Pan MacMillan signed debut author C.L. Miller for The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder. The book, which is described by acquiring publisher Francesca Pathak as “a joyous crime caper that allows the reader to be an armchair detective,” was a hot title at Frankfurt.
It will be published in 2024, and is about Freya, a young woman who solves a murder with her aunt on an antique enthusiasts’ weekend at a manor house.
Cara Miller, who writes as C.L. Miller, has insider’s access to the world of antiques, as her mother is Judith Miller, an antiques expert on the BBC programme The Antiques Roadshow. It was a chance remark by a friend that provided the seed of inspiration for the book, says Clara.
“Just before lockdown I moved to a small medieval village in Dedham Vale, Suffolk, and a local friend quipped ‘it’s all very Midsomer Murders in your village.’ As most writers will know, sometimes it just takes a very small comment to get the cogs turning,” she says.
Although Irish author Andrea Carter, who has published five novels in the Inishown Mysteries series, doesn’t strictly write cosy crime, she incorporates elements of the genre, such as setting her books in a small community with an amateur sleuth. “Setting is one of the most important elements of my books,” she says. “I enjoy playing with the contrast between drama and beauty of Inishowen and the terrible things I make happen there.
“I’ve always liked the structure of a traditional detective novel and writing about a closed circle of suspects has an appeal for me. A small community is often a microcosm of the wider world.”
But what exactly is cosy crime? C.L. Miller’s agent, Hannah Todd at London’s Madeleine Milburn, says cosy crime novels tend to leave violence firmly off the page. “Think Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building rather than anything gruesome,” she says.
It’s often solved by unlikely heroes – OAPs, or in our case an antique hunter and her eccentric aunt. It’s a mystery that you can get lost in, without the horror of graphic violence or being tasked with reflecting on the ills of the world.”