The Body in the Back Garden

A Crescent Cove Mystery, Book 1

By: Mark Waddell

Narrated by: Daniel Henning

Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Crescent Cove, a small hamlet on Vancouver Island, is the last place out-of-work investigative journalist Luke Tremblay ever wanted to see again. He used to spend summers here, until his family learned that he was gay and rejected him. Now, following his aunt's sudden death, he's inherited her entire estate, including her seaside cottage and the antiques shop she ran for forty years in Crescent Cove. Luke plans to sell everything and head back to Toronto as soon as he can . . . but Crescent Cove isn't done with him just yet.

When a stranger starts making wild claims about Luke's aunt, Luke sends him packing. The next morning, though, Luke discovers that the stranger has returned, and now he's lying dead in the back garden. To make matters worse, the officer leading the investigation is a handsome Mountie with a chip on his shoulder who seems convinced that Luke is the culprit. If he wants to prove his innocence and leave this town once and for all, Luke will have to use all his skills as a journalist to investigate the colorful locals while coming to terms with his own painful past.

There are secrets buried in Crescent Cove, and the more Luke digs, the more he fears they might change the town forever.

©2023 Mark Waddell (P)2023 Tantor

Thoroughly Enjoyed This Story!

Hunting for good queer cozy mysteries is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If you like Murder She Wrote style stories and are looking for LGBTQ protagonists, this is a great find for you! I thought the narrator did a great job, and the development of the characters whetted my appetite for hopefully more stories to come. Nice work, Mr. Waddell--looking forward to reading/listening to more stories like this from you!

Lovely cozy mystery

Fantastic beginning to this delightful series. I love a great MM mystery, and this story delivered. The setting is lovely, and I enjoyed the main characters. I am very much looking forward to more tales.

Congats to the narrator who is new to me, he did a fine job of bringing these characters to life.

Loved this first book and can’t wait for more in the series

Just finished this first book in a new series and loved it. Can’t wait for the next book to be recorded. I would classify it as a cozy mystery and that was exactly what I wanted.

Good mystery

new to me narrator and I will listen to his recordings again. I liked his distinct different voices.The story had a lot of twists and kept me guessing.

Desperately Imitation of Josh Lanyon

Everything about this book was wrong. Wrong narrator. Wrong storyline. Wrong positive reviews. If you want a wonderfully written MM cozy mystery, read Josh Lanyon’s Secrets and Scrabble series. It is full of richly developed, colorful characters, and each book has a creatively crafted mystery. In addition, Matt’s narration is superb. This was a poorly written attempt at capturing everything Josh successfully achieved. If I could return it, I would. To say it is MID is too generous.

Shocking!

Shocking that I bought it, shockong tried to listen to it, and more shocking that I persisted to continue to listen, before giving up.

The story is one that was successfully done set in a Welsh village, but this is probably the result of someone using a budget AI, giving it a lot of adjectives and verbs, but letting it use them in contradiction to each other, as well as put wrong suffixes on words (how I was finally convinced it was a bad AI. To quote "being fixed with an impassive stare..." is hardly disturbing.

I strongly support LGBTQ+ authors and literature, but I can't here. Maybe if the narrator did not make all the male characters sound effeminate, something might have possibly worked.

Maybe this is a very, very 1st work, and things will progress...