A review by robinwalter
Bloody Instructions by Sara Woods

lighthearted mysterious relaxing
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

 Before Dean Street Press announced that they would be publishing the first five of her Antony Maitland series in December 2024, I had never even heard of Sara Woods. Now I can't wait to read more. This was a well constructed mystery, and above all,  it was fun to read. 
 
A regular "added value" feature of many Dean Street Press mystery novels are  Introductions by the crime historian Curtis Evans. The biographical background of the authors and the historical context of the novels he provides is very helpful. In his introduction to this book he discusses at some length the "Silver Age" mystery writers, the generation of leading crime writers who came up after Christie, Allingham, Marsh, Sayers etc. Two prominent names from that era are PD James and Ruth Rendell. In his introduction Evans cites an example of someone who praised  Woods  for not writing the sort of bleakly downbeat psychological mysteries those authors specialised in.  Rendell and James are not to my taste, so I was encouraged to learn that Woods was not like them. Having finished this book it turns out she was very much not like them. 
 
On the evidence of this first book in the series, the Antony Maitland mysteries are exactly my kind of mysteries. A prominent feature of the story and one that really endeared it to me is the happy and settled domestic life of the protagonist. Series detectives from James and Rendell on have tended to be dour, dyspeptic,  depressed and depressing, often with a dash of dysfunctional and divorced thrown in for added alliteration. There is none of that here. The sense of genuine affection between Antony Maitland and his wife Jenny, was not only a joy to read in itself but reminded me of one of my favourite married couples from crime fiction, Albert and Amanda Campion. 
 
Woods did not hold back from including frequent references to the mutual affection between Anthony and Jenny, like this delightfully sentimental passage: 
 
He looked at her more searchingly for a moment, trying to see her as a stranger might, her slim figure silhouetted against the red velvet hangings of the box, and her brown curls shining. Her eyes were probably her best feature: grey eyes, with a quality of steadfastness. For the rest . . . but what a soulless thing was a mere catalogue: she was Jenny, he reflected with a sudden surge of affection, and the most beautiful thing in the world. 
 
and she did not hold back from sprinkling the book with a lot of gentle humour. This example of Antony meeting a potential witness made me chuckle: 
 
“I remember. You came with your father. You were very cheerful.” 
Antony, feeling rather as though he had been accused, and convicted, of several of the more lurid Old Testament sins, only just stopped himself in time from apologizing for what had evidently been regarded as a lapse of taste 
 
Some of her humorous observations  may have been inspired by her work in a legal office, as with this passage, describing a barrister evaluating potential jurors 
 
there was a stout, motherly body, who obviously had at least ten children, on whom he felt he could rely for sympathetic attention. (The lady in question was single, a professor at London University, and held men in general, and lawyers in particular, in aversion, but that is beside the point.) 
 
 
It wasn't simply that the book was fun to read that made it enjoyable. Woods wrote well. An example of this that became obvious very early was her ability to create characters that I really did not like. Mystery novels are not generally famous for their characterisation, and it's certainly not the central foundation of her story,  but she manages to create characters that come across as real enough for me to actively dislike them. This was especially true of  one person described as a friend of Anthony who seemed to me anything but. I was also impressed that for a first novel the recurring characters were introduced with a minimum of exposition. We found out something about all of them, but it's clear that we will find out more about the key characters as the series goes. The absence of info dumps was another big plus.
 
An interesting feature of this first book in the series was the way that Anthony himself was put in jeopardy. Not physical danger, but his career and reputation was seriously threatened. I'm scoring this book  4.75/5  because I found the aftermath of the resolution a bit unsatisfying.  The resolution was probably more realistic than the neat and tidy wrap I’d have preferred, but it still left me some distance from gruntled. 
 
This was  my second book for Dean Street December 2024, and the second series debut from a new to me author. I loved both, and since they wrote more than 80 books between them, I have plenty of Dean Street delights to come.