When a film star washes up ashore after disappearing from her luxury yacht, it's the perfect locked room mystery for Father Max to investigate. Someone on the yacht had a reason to make Margot disappear, and it will take an expert to untangle this web of mystery and murder.

Oh, Max Tudor.

I have been looking forward to this book for a year or more, and it was such a letdown.

While reading, I yearned for Nether-Monkslip. Phone calls to Arwena were not cutting it. I missed the village and the goofy villagers! I understand one small town cannot have constant murders but, as a cozy reader, I’m willing to overlook it. The yacht was not a charming setting--it worked in Death on the Nile, but DOTN also had Egypt—a yacht populated with Hollywood types was blah.

Max’s character also felt off. I know he was working through some emotions after the events of the last book, but he seemed very, very bland. Also, I understand Max is attractive. I. Get. It. Not every witness or passerby needs to be thinking abut jumping him, the constant appreciative looks were annoying. AND He was so perfect in this book—let him, hell, let Arwena, have a flaw. They NEED flaws.

Between the setting, characters, and meh-plot I was bored. It took me weeks to finish a one-sitting book.

That said, I really like the Max Tudor series. I have not been disappointed in any of the other five books so I will read book seven. Please, let it be less police work, police work, police work and more villagers and more charming.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy.

I found this book a little hard to get into but once I did I throughly enjoyed it. A well written cozy mystery. The plot has many twists and turns to keep the reader guessing.

After the shattering events of The Haunted Season, Anglican Priest and ex-MI5 star agent Max Tudor has come to the conclusion that one can never really leave FIVE and has agreed to step in on investigations on an "as needed" basis. When aging movie star Margot Browne is found floating in the bay near Monkslip-super-Mare on the coast of England, they ask Max to aid his friend and colleague DCI Cotton. Margot Browne was sailing on a yacht owned by a famous director of Hollywood action films. If the tides had cooperated with the murderer, the body might never have been found. It was found, however, and her death was clearly murder and no accident. But who among the yacht's passengers; the famous director, his self-involved girlfriend, an aging but still well-respected stylist, a screenwriter, Margot's young male companion, the hanger-on Baron and Baroness? Or could it be the chef or yoga instructor on the crew? Also on the ship is a female MI5 female agent with whom Max has a history. She has an entirely different investigation ongoing.

The characters are introduced to us in the beginning extensively, as is usual in Malliet's books. It's a helpful device when there are so many characters to consider and as the various connections to Margot are revealed, absolutely necessary in keeping them sorted. I really admire Malliet's deft parody of the Agatha Christie novels and others published during the "Golden Age'. The Max Tudor novels require a definite "suspension of disbelief" however. The notion that Max's bishop would approve of his marriage to a well-known Pagan and that MI5 could call on him at will is a bit hard to swallow. But if you can do that, the Max Tudor novels are a treat to read with great characterization and plotting. Malliet has a witty and engaging style; one that has brought her many awards and legions of fans. I did miss Max's village of Nether Monkslip and the presence of his wife, Awena, and hope he will return there in the next book. An added plus for Devil's Breath is more background on the dashing DCI Cotton and the revelation of his first name!

I highly recommend the Max Tudor series and Devil's Breath. Thanks to St. Martin's Minotaur and NetGalley for an advance digital copy. The opinions above are my own.

RATING-4 Stars

A whodunit with a cast of actors and hangers on becomes the latest case for Max Tudor, a former MI15 agent turned small town vicar. Called in to help D.C. Cotton solve a mystery of an actress, Max slowly solves the mystery. I enjoyed it.

This is my first G. M. Malliet book and I'm sorry to say it will probably be my last. Now, I'm sure this isn't the fault of the author or the book, it just failed to resonate with me. Perhaps if I'd started with the first book of the series I might have a different feel for it, but I sincerely doubt it. I doubt it because I frequently start series several books in and that never bothers me and usually just makes me want to go back and read the others. I was really looking forward to finding a new mystery series to love, but I'm afraid this one won't be it.

It isn't badly written nor is the story bad -- it just wasn't my cup of tea. You, however, may absolutely love it!

One thing I really did like was the 'Cast of Characters' section at the beginning. Stephanie Laurens does that in her books and it really serves well to refresh your memory, especially for those characters who appear less frequently.

What didn't I like? Well, it was just much to busy. Too many characters, too many suspects, to many offshoot stories,etc. -- just too too much.

"I requested and received this book at no cost to me and volunteered to read it; my review is my honest opinion and given without any influence by the author or publisher."

Another delightful entry in the Max Tudor series, this title is a sly sendup of Hollywood and the movie industry. Aging actress Margot Browne disappears off the side of a luxury yacht and the suspects include all of the usual Hollywood types, including the incredibly rich older producer who was Margot's early partner, his bimbo girlfriend, her young lover, her stylist, a screenwriter working on her autobiography and even the chef aboard the yacht. Max unravels the mystery thread by thread, and if the ending relies on too many coincidences, we don't even care because we've had so much fun reading it.

You would think that with a body washed ashore from a private yacht from a private party that there would not be that many suspects. That's where you would be wrong. The suspects are coming out of the woodwork in this book. Not only could the reason for the death be the personality or anything to do with the glamorous film star whose body was found washed ashore, there are other things going on with this yacht.

The more questions put to the people on this boat, the more things that come to light. The film star could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are a lot of strange characters on board the yacht and that doesn't even take into account the crew. I found this to be pretty entertaining, enjoyable and it definitely kept me guessing.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

When you put a group of show business types together on a yacht, no matter how large, egos will clash. Everyone wants a part in the next big blockbuster. Behind the posturing, secrets are simmering, and soon Max and Cotton must work together to solve the mystery of a death at sea.

What a pity. I bought the first book of this series from Audible a while back, and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I was happy to grab this sixth book on Netgalley. And it was a slog.

Over and above almost everything else, the book drove me crazy with constant "accidental" puns. "The kitchen of a high-end restaurant is a pressure cooker—no pun intended." "[The chef] would throw him in the soup, if you’ll pardon the expression". "The chef will spill the beans soon enough—sorry, what an appalling play on words." And so on. And on. I seem to keep using the comparison to salt a lot lately: some is usually good, but more is never better. There is so much <I>more</i> in this book that I wanted to smack someone. It might not have been so bad if, every single time, whoever used the pun didn't also apologize for it.

Something else that annoyed me, perhaps more than it should have, was the effortless-seeming massive success of the main character's wife. I seem to remember not being overly fond of Awena, the pagan expert in just about everything who ends up marrying the priest… I think it was largely disbelief in and discomfort with the concept of the pairing; again, I read the first book some time ago, but I vaguely recall some derision or mockery of Christianity from the pagan community, which is apparently more acceptable than derision or mockery of other belief systems in much the same way that it's okay to make fun of white men and no other group.

So the "opposites attract" situation with the two of them seemed very much off, but what irked me more was that Awena seems to have become England's Martha Stewart. (Nigella Lawson without the charm?) She has a tv show, for which she dictated all the terms to suit her and her schedule so that she could continue to be the same domestic goddess. The chef at Buckingham Palace is using her recipes. Yay. Towards the end of the book Max thinks complacently that, as usual, Awena had been right about the solution to the case – when in fact she had said something very specific about the killer which was the opposite of true. For a character who didn't even make a firsthand appearance in the book, she bugged me deeply.

Even apart from these quibbles, I just didn't enjoy the writing this go-round. There were echoes – the exact same wording used at least a couple of times within a short period. The idea that our priest Max's police partner was making notes on their cases to do a Watson later was meta, but not in a good way – it brought up the same old question of confidentiality, of propriety, and about the author's point of view of her own writing when Max muses that their cases would "qualify … only as potboilers". Hmf. The drug aspect of the case struck me as simply absurd. <spoiler>"And then one night the sous- chef ran out of the icing sugar he needed to decorate his pastries. And unknowingly, he used cocaine powder from the stores in the safe room."</spoiler> After a certain point my patience had dried up, to the point that a slight to Marilyn Monroe pushed several of my buttons.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

This was a quick and fun book to read! I started reading the Max Tudor mysteries in the fall of 2014, and I was hooked. I have been itching for a new installment in this series for a long time, and in this one - book #6 - Malliet definitely delivers. I love her unique, no-nonsense writing style, her references to pop culture and celebrities, and, of course, her characters. Max is in his element, trying to solve the death of actress Margot Browne, alongside DCI Cotton (whose first name is finally revealed), and Max encounters a blast from the past.

I loved this book -- I couldn't put it down!

I enjoyed this book very much. I liked the character development during the story. The story flowed along at a good pace. I feel this is a good addition to the series.