Author

Peter Boland Audiobooks

The Charity Shop Detective Agency: cosy crime among the bric-a-brac

1 audiobook reviewed
★ 4.2/5 average
6 listener ratings

Main genres

Crime & Thriller

Author series

The Charity Shop Detective Agency Mysteries · 1 book

Who is Peter Boland?

Cosy crime lives or dies on its setting, and a charity shop is an inspired one: a place the whole neighbourhood passes through, where objects arrive with their histories still attached, and where the volunteers behind the till hear absolutely everything. Peter Boland built a mystery series on that premise, and the idea does a great deal of the work before a body is even found.

The furniture of the genre is unmistakably British here: high street bric-a-brac, amateur sleuths who ought to know better, a tone that keeps menace at arm’s length and puts character in the foreground. It is written for listeners who want a puzzle to solve in good company rather than a thriller that leaves them checking the locks.

Peter Boland in audiobooks

The opening case in The Charity Shop Detective Agency Mysteries runs to a little over ten hours and is read by Zara Ramm, a narrator well suited to the register: dry, warm, and precise with the comic timing that cosy crime depends on.

This is the natural entry point to the sequence, with nothing earlier to hunt down first. Ideal for a long journey or a week of dog walks, taken an episode at a time. Browse the audiobook below.