by by Victoria Tait (Author) 

 Victoria Tait’s new travel cozy mystery series is set first in the Azores, an island group that is a part of Portugal, only about 1,000 miles away in the Atlantic Ocean.

Here Tait has sent Georgiana Carey, a secondary character from some of her Dottie Sayers mysteries. She was known as George then (Her father wanted a son.) and she owned a part of the town’s Antique business.  Now, after her cheating husband was murdered, and she got her feet wet sleuthing in the Cotswolds, she is on her own, as the more vulnerable, Georgiana.  How will she do?

Pretty well, if this book is any clue.  She is sent to the Azores to value the antiques in the estate of a wealthy islander who has died. It’s a beautiful spot with a gorgeous waterfront and a small town sold on fiestas. The weather is perfect and the people pleasant … for a while that is.

Georgiana gets to work on the valuations, too shy at first to be a part of the community. But she is soon drawn into the town with all the festivities. There she meets women with some of her own heartaches, a sorrowful priest, a jolly policeman, whose wife talks (and gossips) a mile-a-minute. … and one very mean son-of-a-gun man. 

At the estate, the housekeeper Liliana, and her daughter Beatriz share some of their lives  too, and Georgiana finds links from them to the house that others have not seen. 

Unlike Dottie Sayers or policewoman Keya Varma, Georgiana is not a sleuth or detective by nature. When someone is killed, she doesn’t go off looking for clues. But clues come to her in the antiques and papers she is cataloging at the Estate. And, surprising to even her, she discovers a killer… or two. Oh my! 

It took a little bit for me to get into Georgiana’s way of thinking, but as she loosened up in the tropical paradise, I got a glimpse and then a big slice of her heart.  I think she’s going to make it. She’s confident in her business, and now, she has a couple murders solved.  What will happen in Morocco, where she travels to next?  I can’t wait to see.  You bet I’ll be following her on her travels.