Review by Annabel
Although Irish author Jess Kidd has written four previous well-received novels, and I even own copies of two of them, I’ve not managed to read her until her new book, her fifth, in which she takes a change of direction, starting a cosy crime series with a singular amateur sleuth at the helm.
On the first day of leaving the sisters, Nora felt that she might just float away, with her unrestricted vision and her light and airy head. […] On this second day after leaving the order, Nora has developed a trick. She looks down at the shoes on her feet and tells them to hang on to her as best they can. Heavy and square and of an ugly auld style, the shoes are a grand bit of ballast. They are not her shoes; neither are the clothes on her back. She entered High Dallow Carmelite monastery thirty years ago, so her own few bits would be long gone. These are the worldly belongings of another woman, discarded in favour of the habit and the veil. Nora can’t, for the life of her, imagine which sister in her former order owned the coat she is currently wearing. Puce is a colour you could certainly part company with.
We’re only on the second page and I’m liking Nora already. It’s October, and she’s arrived at the seaside in off-season – the Kentish resort of Gore-on-Sea. Her destination is a boarding house, Gull’s Nest, where a room has become available at short notice. Its former lady occupant just left with no notice at the end of August. Nora asks the landlady a few questions about her, but holds back, she’s not ready to disclose why she’s visiting yet. As you might expect of a boarding house in the 1950s, the era in which this novel is set, there is a myriad of rules on how the house is run – meal times, bath times, laundry days and lock out at 9pm; the privy is ‘in the garden, behind the rhododendrons’!
Back to that former occupant; she was Frieda, a younger former sister who had left the order. She and Nora had corresponded, but then the letters stopped. Nora, ready to retire from the order, had decided to follow in the footsteps of her friend to try to find out what happened to her. Thus, Nora needs to get to know the other occupants of Gull’s Nest, and where better than over housekeeper Mrs Rawling’s braised liver at dinner. There’s Professor Poppy – not a learned man but a Punch & Judy puppeteer with his little dog; a young couple – Stella and Teddy; Mr Bill Carter – an older soldierly man who runs the bar at the Marine Hotel; and Karel Ježek. Last but not least, there is the landlady’s eight-year-old daughter Dinah, who is mute, hiding in the sideboard cupboard! Nora will find Dinah a fascinating challenge. One or more of them must know something about Frieda’s disappearance. Similarly, the other residents are keen to get to know Nora, but she decides not to let on that she had been a nun, telling them that she was mostly nursing. All of them, and Dinah too, will have something to add to her investigations, which begin subtly, but speed up once there is a death at the Gull’s Nest. Nora finds herself at odds with Police Inspector Rideout, who would rather handle things himself without her interference, but later comes to appreciate her unofficial assistance.
‘I won’t give away your secret, Sister Agnes.’
‘That is no longer my name and never will be again.’
‘You won’t go back to the monastery, after you’ve solved my case?’
‘I can’t go back. I’d have to start from the beginning.’ She glances up at him. ‘If they’d even have me.’
‘Would you go back if you could?’
‘No. I am in the world now.’
Although Gore-on-Sea is a fictional Kentish town, all the way through I couldn’t help thinking of it as Gorleston-on-Sea, just south of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, where I lived for a year or so in the early 1980s! As you might imagine, with any small seaside town, there are many similarities, especially off-season.
Much as I liked Nora, we don’t get to know her that well in this first book of the series. A bit of life experienced before the monastery beckoned is hinted at but we get no detail. Nora is surprisingly grounded and worldly, despite having been cloistered away for so long, even with her nursing skills. I hope we’ll get to know her better in the sequel, Murder at the Spirit Lounge – set once more in Gore-on-Sea where Nora has made her new home.
Falling into the cosy crime bracket, Kidd has created a unique new amateur sleuth in Nora Breen – I loved that she is out of the habit so to speak, which gives her a certain freedom. This book is an utterly charming and witty seaside mystery and I can’t wait to read that sequel.
Annabel is a co-founder of Shiny and one of its editors.
Jess Kidd, Murder at Gull’s Nest (Faber, 2025). 978-057138944, 331pp., hardback.
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I saw the author talk about this book at the Faber Spring Showcase and really want to read it (just didn’t want to buy it, cos it was hardback and I have to get rid of a million books before I move).