Karen Baugh Menuhin Audiobooks

Heathcliff Lennox investigates: The Murder of Viscount Montcrief, English cosy crime

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.6/5 average

2 listener ratings

Who is Karen Baugh Menuhin?

A murdered viscount, a detective named Heathcliff Lennox: the furniture of English crime writing arranged with obvious affection. Karen Baugh Menuhin writes the Heathcliff Lennox mysteries, and this is the tradition of the country house, the closed circle of suspects, and the amateur who notices what the professionals miss.

The pleasures of that tradition are precise and thoroughly understood. Manners matter. So does class, since a title in the victim’s name changes the shape of an investigation before it has properly begun. The catalogue files the series across crime and general fiction, which is the right double claim: mysteries of this stripe are as much comedies of English behaviour as they are puzzles.

Beyond the books our record stays quiet, and the books are more than sufficient introduction.

Karen Baugh Menuhin in audiobooks

Sam Dewhurst-Phillips narrates, and for period-set English mystery the accent work is not decoration: it is how a listener places every character within moments of meeting them. Under eight hours makes for a tidy, well-proportioned case.

Ratings remain few here, so the early average is best read as encouragement rather than evidence. Series of this kind can be entered almost anywhere, though following Lennox from his first outing gives the recurring cast time to become familiar. Anyone who works through Golden Age reprints and wants something new in the same key will feel immediately at home. See what is on offer below.