I apprecitate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this a really interesting read and the characters are quite engaging. it kept me reading until the end. I highly recommend.

I found this novel quite enjoyable! Thank you for the opportunity to read an advanced copy. I did not need to read any other books in the series to understand the storyline.

L C Tyler continues the travails of Ethelred Tressider and his literary agent E;lsie Thirkettle. in Farewell My Herring.
They are supposed to help coach a writer's course at Fell Hall, a spot far from anyone. People's secrets start bubbling out and bodies start dropping. What scandals caused the deaths? Lots of suspects in this closed house mystery.

Farewell My Herring by L. C. Tyler

Writers arrive at Fell Hall for a creative writing course. One of them is murdered and the rest of them can’t leave because of the snowstorm.

I enjoyed this book. It’s is the first one I have read in this “Herring” series. It is about a murder at a winter resort. Snow is very high and no one can get in or out. One of them is a murderer. It had many twists and turns. I recommend this book.

Thanks to Net Galley for sending me an advanced reader’s copy for my review.

FInally another Ethelred and Elsie's engaging story! Look at the cover, it's gorgeous af and as good as the cover, the story can get me hooked up till the end. It was such a great experience!
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC

Ethelred Tressider and his agent Elsie Thirkettle have been invited to lecture on a creative writing course at Fell Hall, a remote location in the heart of ragged countryside that even sheep are keen to shun. While Ethelred’s success as a writer is distinctly average, Elsie sees this as an opportunity to scout for new, hopefully more lucrative, talent. But heavy snow falls overnight, trapping those early arrivals inside, and tensions are quick to emerge between the assembled group.

When one of their number goes missing, Ethelred leads a search party and makes a gruesome discovery. With no phone signal and no hope of summoning the police, can Ethelred and Elsie identify the killer among them before one of them is next?

"That’s the trouble with male writers - put them in a bar full of girls for long enough and they’ll wake up the next day trying to remember how many draft first novels they’ve promised to read."

What starts off as a fiction writing course, turns into a nightmare for most of these really shady authors. Its in a really isolated area, they're all snowed in, and then there's a murder.

I was surprised by who the killer was, and I relate to Elsie on a spiritual level. I did think that Elsie and Ethelred were absolute psychopaths for being that chill with a dead body in front of them, but I haven't read any of the other books in the series. I was slightly put off with how they kept telling their theories to different people, but that was also a great way to draw more information out. I did skim over their dialogue towards the end of it, but I'm glad that Elsie's chocolate obsession led to something. While I don't read a lot in this genre, I do think that this is perfect for people who liked Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys growing up!

Thank you, NetGalley for a chance to read and review this!

A thoroughly enjoyable novel, interesting characters travel to a remote location in the English countryside to hear a lecture on a creative writing course but it all changes with a sudden twist that turns into a murder! The author is very clever and it's refreshing to read a book.

There is much humour in this book and some really witty dialogue which, I've enjoyed, the book ends well with some nicely tied up ends and many secrets which seem mysterious at first an in fact divulged, quite rightly so. I really didn't see where the plot was going to be honest, it caught me by surprise which I must say is very refreshing, nobody likes a know it all and it's even better when you have no clue either, very unpredictable.

With thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the chance to read this free ARC in return for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Ethelred Tressider, just barely successful writer of comic mysteries and his agent Elsie Thirkettle, always on the lookout for more successful talent, are invited to take part in a weekend of lectures on mystery writing in a location so remote 'even sheep are keen to shun'. The writers and a couple of members of the audience have arrived early to get prepared. Unfortunately, over night, a heavy snowfall traps everyone inside. Tensions are already starting to mar the already ruined weekend when one of their members goes missing.

Farewell My Herring is the ninth entry in the Herring Mysteries by LC Tyler but the first I've read. I admit my main reasons for requesting this from Netgalley were the title and the cover and that's always an iffy proposition. I wasn't sure what to expect except perhaps a rather humorous homage to the Golden Age of mysteries and there are certainly traces of that here. But that was just a bit of what kept me reading.The characters are all interesting, especially Ethelred and Elsie who make for a very likeable pair of would-be sleuths. As well, the dry wit of the dialogue, and the numerous red herrings scattered about kept me engaged and entertained throughout. Overall, great fun to read, perfect for a lazy afternoon.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Allison & Busby for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

Thank you to both #NetGalley and Allison & Busby for providing me an advance copy of L.C. Tyler’s ninth book in the Herring Mysteries series, Farewell My Herring, in exchange for an honest review.

Initially, I was unaware that #FarewellMyHerring was part of an entire series. Whether this fact bodes well for readers or not, will depend on the individual reader. On the one hand, you can easily read this novel without knowing any background details or characters. On the other, readers who are fans of the series may be disappointed in the story arc. Since I have neither read any books in this particular series nor any other novels written by this author, you should take my review with a grain of salt if you are fond of either.

The style in which the book was written might have annoyed me the most. I tend to enjoy books that are told from the perspective of multiple characters, but the format did not work as well here since each chapter was written in the first person. For instance, you would have a chapter for Ethelred and then a chapter or two later it would switch back to Elsie, but both characters would be speaking as “I.” Also, at first the witty banter between the characters was quite charming, but this sparkle fizzled quickly into tedious dialogue.

In addition, while the novel is well-written from a technical perspective, the crisp, clear sentences are mostly devoid of imagery. However, this may be due to the fact that the book is essentially a locked-room mystery novel (i.e., the setting is Fell Hall).

Lastly, I found many of the “twists” and “turns” in the novel to be predictable. I also did not ever connect or care for any of the characters. Again, take this review with a grain of salt because I coming into this series on book nine. Thus, this will definitely have an impact on how I am describing the characters as well as how I view the storyline.

Overall, I give the novel a three, but would be open to reading a future standalone written by this author—there were some humorous passages and intriguing parts.

I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
A gathering of mystery writers and editors converge on a remote home in the British countryside. Add a rumor of safe houses, a snowstorm and secrets and you have a fairly standard mystery plot, right? This one will surprise you! Comedic and delightful tale of murder with elements of laugh out loud humor and quirky characters make this a sheer delight!! I loved this book. It is a noisy on all the elements of good mysteries with tongue in cheek dialogue. Well done! I will be seeking more from this author in the future for sure.

Fell Hall is remote, no wifi connections, cut off from the outside world and ideal for a creative writing retreat. When just three of the participants turn up (two of them one day early), the others are the lecturers it is a mixed crowd and does not sit quite right.

All are crime writers of different strengths and popularity and the convenor of them all seems very detached from it all. Running the event with an iron hand and according to rules with no deviation Wendy has done this before and hopes to conclude this one successfully. She did not envisage that those who came had all got complicated histories and that one of them was a blackmailer.

When one body is discovered and when the whole Hall is cut off completely due to inclement weather it is upto Ethelred and Elsie to do the detective work themselves and try to find which of their small group is the murderer. It seems straightforward at first like all mystery murders but then they get side tracked by additional bits of information and events.

Set over just a couple of days, the story goes back and forth dissecting each person present and the reasons they could or could not be the murderer. Why the victim was chosen is fairly straightforward and the end was not too complicated.

A well told mystery.

Farewell My Herring is a stylishly clever classic mystery and the 9th Herring Mystery by L.C. Tyler. Released 22nd April 2021 by Allison & Busby, it's 227 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This hitherto unfamiliar (to me) series is a genuinely funny and surprisingly nuanced homage to golden age mystery in general, and Christie specifically. The author uses the classic tropes: inaccessible mountain writers' retreat cut off by a winter snowstorm, a murder and disappearance, atmospheric (creepy) house with a mysterious major domo... but he manages to avoid the pitfall of just riffing endlessly on canonical Christie which becomes boring in short order.

The plot is well engineered and the characters were well written and (although snarky and silly in places) mostly believable. The returning characters, hapless author Ethelred, and his sarcastic and cynical literary agent, Elsie are by turns earnest and cynical. The story is told with alternating chapter point-of-views between Elsie and Ethelred which weren't any problem to keep straight since their voices were so distinct from one another (and the chapter headers are labeled).

This is a neatly stylish, entertaining, and self-contained mystery. The character backstories are provided by the author and it wasn't obviously a series book. I had no trouble following along and the denouement and resolution were complete and satisfying. It was good enough that I fully intend to chase down the earlier books in the series.

Four stars. Entertaining and well crafted.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

In this novel L.C. Tyler pays homage to the great crime writers of the last one hundred years, from Golden Age authors like John Dickson Card and Raymond Chandler to modern masters as current as M.W. Craven, and surely earns his own place in this elite, much-loved group.
Ethelred and Elsie are fabulous characters and never fail to entertain and amuse. The plot is complex and as you would expect packed-full of red herrings.
This book is a must read for everyone who loves crime novels. An absolute pleasure to read.

Another book selected mostly for the unusual title, but also for the beautiful cover, Farewell My Herring was every bit as unusual as the title implies.

I did enjoy this comical crime novel, there is plenty to amuse the reader in the amateur detection of Ethelred and Elsie. A bit too overtop for me to want to read another, but it was a fun satirical adventure.

I had a look at his other titles--they all contain the word "herring." Ok, so when I saw this title I was immediately reminded of Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, but when I looked at Tyler's other "herring" titles, Agatha Christie was well represented: Ten Little Herrings, The Herring in the Library, The Herring on the Nile, etc. Chandler and Christie were certainly the source of the Herring titles. :)

NetGalley/Alison and Busby
Comic Crime? April 22, 2021. Print length: 227 pages.

Thank you to Allison & Busby and Net Galley for this ARC. What can I say, another great instalment form Elsie and Ethelred. The writing style is so different from other authors, makes this serious stand out from the rest. Can't wait for the next book.

The opening paragraphs were humorous, a nice insight into the two protagonists and encouraged me to keep reading. I loved the rural setting and the classic who-done-it structure of the story. However, the character of Elsie started to grate on my nerves before long because she was too much over-the-top. I felt as if the writer was trying too hard to get a laugh.
It was otherwise fairly well-plotted with a lot of red herrings and an interesting read.

fun, situational-humor, verbal-humor, sleuth, sly-humor, stranded, country-house, murder, mystery, mystery-writer, wry-humor, snarky, England*****

Mystery writers, agents, rural Yorkshire, and lots of snow=murder and snickering humour. This entangled tale is as full of twists and red herrings as it is of fun. Won't even try to do any kind of summary, but be prepared to ignore reality and enjoy the read. This is the first Herring I'vr read, but it won't be the last!
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Allison & Busby via NetGalley. Thank you!

In Farewell My Herring, author LC Tyler has created a thoroughly enjoyable novel that is a wonderful example of the understated British humor that I like so much. And the humor comes writ large via Tyler’s spot-on send-up of the classic “isolated mansion in a snowstorm” trope – nicely updated as a rumored CIA (or MI6? or KGB?) safe house in a snowstorm. But it also comes writ small, in short bone-dry off-hand comments scattered throughout the book. And there were enough of these that I had to read the book by myself so no one would hear me suddenly laughing out loud.

Protagonists Ethelred, a moderately successful mystery author, and Elsie, his chocoholic always-on-the-make agent, have been invited to be guest lecturers in a short course for aspiring authors – held, of course, in the aforementioned mansion, Fell Hall. The send-up starts in the very first paragraph, as E&E’s taxi driver cheerfully opines about how easy it would be for him to knock them off somewhere along the lonely road to the Hall, and “it would be months before they found the bits the buzzards didn’t want”. It continues as we meet the course director, Wendy, who may or may not be a secret agent; the local help, Jenny, who knows Fell Hall inside and out; and a nice mix of authors and students, all of whom have more-or-less shady pasts. Of course, someone soon dies, and Tyler then proceeds to skillfully skewer just about every “isolated mansion” plot device known to humankind, including disappearing characters, mysterious notes, odd noises, flickering lights, spooky basements, late night searches (conducted in pairs, naturally), and a boat-full of titular red herrings.

Tyler also excels at slightly sardonic humor, and Farewell My Herring reminds me a lot in that respect of my all-time favorite author, Sarah Caudwell, whose short four-book Hilary Tamar series engenders the same sort of chuckles. (Which is a huge compliment, by the way, since I don’t compare many books to hers…) However, also like Caudwell’s books, the plot is not really the strong point of Farewell My Herring – it’s more like a foil for the characters and the humor. I found that I had guessed the murderer and most of the motive early on, but in the end, it didn’t make any difference to me, because I was having so much fun otherwise reading the book. But, if you are a reader who really cares about the nitty-gritty of the murder case itself, you may find yourself a teeny bit frustrated. In any case, myself, I’m not that kind of reader, and I’m thrilled that Farewell My Herring is Tyler’s ninth book in the series, since that means I now have eight more I can go back and read! Farewell My Herring easily earns a five-star rating, which I only give to maybe one in thirty or forty books that I read. And finally, my thanks to the publisher, Allison & Busby, and to NetGalley for the advance review copy.

3.5 ⭐️

I don’t believe i’ve ever read a cozy mystery before. I was eager to figure out “whodunit”, but I missed the typical “edge of my seat” sensation with thrillers and the sort.

not mad I read it :)

Farewell My Herring is the ninth entry in L.C. Tyler’s series but the first of the novels that I have read. It is a quick and easy read, perfect for a reader who wants some light distraction.

The plot is classic with people marooned by a snowstorm and a murder taking place. The main characters are a writer and Elsie who is scouting for new talent. With the storm and no phone, the stakes are high. Ethelred and Elsie have their work cut out for them!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title with its appealing cover. All opinions are my own.