Death at the Plague Museum – Lesley Kelly
On Friday, three civil servants leading Virus policy hold a secret meeting at the Museum of Plagues and Pandemics. By Monday, two are dead and one is missing.
It’s up to Mona and Bernard of the Health Enforcement Team to find the missing official before panic hits the streets.
I received a review copy of Death at the Plague Museum from the publishers who also invited me to join the blog tour.
I got permission from the publishers to use enthusiastic sweary words to describe how much I enjoyed Death at the Plague Museum. I could use them, mainly as adjectives, but I will keep it clean. Just know that I am a huge fan of these books (The Health of Strangers series) and I would like lots more people to spread the booklove and chat with me about them.
Plague Museum is the third novel in the series. Reading the earlier books is not essential but will give a better understanding of the characters. In brief, our focus is on the staff of the HET. The books are set in Edinburgh but after a virus has swept through the city and very careful steps are now being taken to monitor the populous to restrict further infection. We follow the HET employees who enforce the health checks and ensure the city residents try to restrict infections spreading.
A prominent advocate of the health screenings has vanished just as her routine check up is due. The negative publicity of her missing the health check she so stringently advocates has to be kept in check and the missing woman found as a matter of urgency. It falls to Mona, Bernard and their colleagues to track her down.
Matters are complicated by the unexpected death of another prominent figure in the anti-virus reforms – a known associate of the missing woman.
With a death to be explained and a missing woman to be found there is a great mystery story at the heart of Death at the Plague Museum. Where these stories really shine is the focus on the lives of the cast – they are so much more than their respective jobs and Lesley Kelly gives them a chance to shine. I want to read about them because they are so much fun to watch.
Written with wonderfully dark humour and the wry observational opinions I always expect from Scottish characters I get so much enjoyment from this series.
It is time you became acquainted with the Health of Strangers. Bloody marvellous.
Death at the Plague Museum is published by Sandstone Books and is available to order here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plague-Museum-Health-Strangers-Thriller/dp/1912240521/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_3?crid=2USWGM0E3BKZ&keywords=death+at+the+plague+museum&qid=1555238088&s=gateway&sprefix=death+at+the+pla%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-3-fkmrnull