Silks: A Catherine Kint Mystery by Hugh McGinlay

Title: Silks: A Catherine Kint Mystery

Author: Hugh McGinlay

Genre: Crime, Mystery

Publisher: Clan Destine Press

Published: 17^th September 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

Price: $28.95

Synopsis: In the frosty Melbourne winter, milliner sleuth Catherine Kint looks for distraction in a night at the circus.

When tragedy strikes, she and her barman Boris are drawn into a new mystery.

As they draw back the metaphorical curtain, they’re confronted with a troop in chaos, a culture of secrecy and a family in crisis.

Add in hula hooping thugs, a desperate suspect and a nihilistic bully and you have a recipe for carnage even Catherine can’t control.

Oh, and then there’s Boris’ love life – send in the clowns, in Silks, the latest in Hugh McGinlay‘s Catherine Kint Mystery series, which includes Jinx, Pachyderm and Bodysurfing.

~*~

Silks is the fourth Catherine Kint mystery starring Catherine Kint, a gin enthusiast and Australia’s only milliner sleuth. She is also a skilled storyteller and likes men with high cheekbones. Catherine also notices things that other people don’t – and home is Brunswick in Melbourne. Silks opens when Catherine and Boris head to the circus – but it won’t all be fun and games. Everything is going to plan – until one of the performers, Silver, tumbles down in the silks, dead. This kicks off the novel and Catherine is catapulted into an investigation, caught between Ciara, Silver’s friend, and Silver’s father, Mr Barwick. As Catherine and Boris start to look into what happened, chaos, the secrecy of the circus, a family in crisis start to come to light.

At first, everything looks unrelated, but of course, Catherine sees the connections and links, and knows that she can’t accept anything she has been told on face value – especially when things get hairy. Whilst this is the fourth novel and the characters and their history are established, I did feel like it was one of those crime series where each novel is its own story driven by series characters. Some events referred to sounded like they had come in previous books, yet it can be read as its own entity and story, so I could read the book and not be worried that I was missing something. This story was paced well too – something I always look for in a crime novel, and I have to say, it was done well in this book. I think the pacing in crime novels and stories is something that Australian crime authors do well – they don’t stuff around; they give you what you need when you need it, and they make sure that the story has the right conclusion that it needs to have.

As the investigation progresses and secrets come out, there are a few dark moments that add to the intrigue and mystery, and I found myself wondering whom I could trust other than Catherine and Boris – who are fantastic characters. I think they worked well together. It was a good novel that didn’t allow romance to muddy things, which made the crime aspect stronger and shine through – something I always enjoy because it shows that there are many ways to write and that good writing doesn’t always need romance or sex – that maybe it just needs the odd hint at it, whilst the focus on the main story is what makes the story worth reading. 

The mystery and crime in this novel evolves and grows as the clues are dropped. Readers will enjoy this addition as they try to solve the crime that took place at the circus and find out what a trio of thugs want with Catherine and Boris as everything starts to unravel. The story two perspectives – Catherine and Boris, whose separate narratives are still part of the same mystery, and it works to enhance what is going on and make the story move along towards its conclusion. It shows that whilst each one deals with different things, there are hints that things could be connected – but nothing is for sure. And this is what makes crime novels so good, because they cleverly bring seemingly disparate things together in ways that make sense, and that make you wonder if they are connected or mere coincidence. I think this is a great novel, and a wonderful cosy crime.