Farm Fresh Blog

If you are looking for a mystery series that you can slip into like a favorite flannel shirt, this is it. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman follows a group of friends in a retirement village who get together every Thursday to review cold murder cases. Only two of these old folks have any police experience whatsoever. One worked in British intelligence, and the other one is in a coma. Their move from working cold cases to investigating fresh murders is unexpected and yet most satisfying. Starting with The Thursday Murder Club, the series spans five books with more in the works.

As a retired crime scene investigator, I tend to get annoyed quickly with mystery novels that slide to the absurd or silly and this has none of that. Each mystery is rich and woven into the tapestry in such a way that it’s entirely believable. The books are mysteries, but they are also character studies. Osman thoroughly fleshes out these characters in such a way that you care deeply for them as people. They aren’t words on a page, they are your friends, your parents, your grandparents.

The only thing I didn’t like, and I got over it quickly, is that the books are written in third person present tense. “Elizabeth nods.” “Elizabeth raises an eyebrow.” This grammatical perspective draws many readers into the story. It tends to pull me out of the story because I prefer past tense. That said, after the initial distraction, I quickly fell into the story and found that I didn’t notice it as I read.

This is a very popular series and I’m ashamed to say that I just now sat down to read the books because I saw the movie on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely must. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie play our sleuths. I was so smitten with them that I immediately grabbed the first few books. And then more. I planned to wait until the final book in hardback moved to paperback, but that didn’t happen. The very moment I finished Book 4; I bought Book 5 in hardback. I was obsessed. I had to know what my dear friends did next. These books are that good.

If you enjoy a good mystery that also pulls you into the lives of the main characters, grab The Thursday Murder Club series, where the reading glasses and slip-on shoes are beside the evidence markers.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/the-thursday-murder-club?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/make-the-most-of-murder?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/the-heroin-of-hate?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/tigers-and-trespassers?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/holding-back-the-night?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/the-gol-degree?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

https://open.substack.com/pub/sheridanrowelangford/p/behind-the-shower-curtain?r=19ur4m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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Getting one book published and wrapping up the first draft of the next book (a mystery novel! It's funny. You'll love these old girls!) left me little time to get anything else done in the months of November and December and so I didn't get the Christmas tree up until yesterday. Didn't start Christmas shopping until yesterday either. Everyone waiting on gifts is hereby notified that those gifts didn't get in the mail until today. 

I almost didn't put up a Christmas tree this year. Seriously. It was already December 21st. That's pretty much on the ledge of Christmas. The Grinch and Max are on the hill starting their downhill race now. But nevertheless, given some time to breathe, I dragged that darned box out of a packed closet and began putting up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. 

It took forever. Each ornament was a trip through time. Down Memory Lane. I remember the wooden Santa Claus from when I was a school teacher. The beautiful porcelain Arabian stallion was one of my very first Christmas ornaments as an adult. It was splurge at the time. Could we really afford to waste money on a porcelain ornament? I think that was 1984. I still have that ornament. And it still makes me smile. 

One by one they went up on the tree. Gifts from friends, family and loved ones. Gifts that never fail to make me remember that person with a smile. Ornaments honoring old dogs, dead dogs. Loved dogs. A skeleton and evidence tag from my time as a CSI. This one was on the tree that I kept on my desk at work.  

This isn't a beautiful themed tree. It is a hodge podge tree of memories. A tree of my life. And so after the memories were enjoyed and hung on the tree, when the sun set and the Christmas lights glowed, I had no regrets for taking time on the downhill slide into Christmas to finally put up my little Charlie Brown tree. 

Blogging Again!

With the release of the latest book, Wet Noses & World Domination, I've come to the realization that I need to start blogging again. Several years ago I fell out of the habit of blogging because most of us were moving to social media. Many of you followed me on my personal facebook page at Sheri Rowe Langford and my author facebook page at Sheridan Rowe Langford. I'm not as good at keeping up with Instagram but my goal is to get better. I gave up on Twitter entirely. Sorry. I need pictures and more words than that. (Y'all know I'm 'wordy.')

Now let's look at the #1 reason for why blogging on the laptop tends to get swept away by social media - the smart phone. This handy device makes it so easy to whip out the camera, take a picture, and post it to facebook with whatever creative juices that would have gone into a blog post. And while it's nice, because it's easy, the reality is that social media platforms do not belong to the writer or to the reader and as I've seen recently, these platforms can get jerked away at any given moment. Many of my readers follow me on social media and we have become dear friends. The posts and images that we put up on social media, the contacts - everything really, does not belong to us, but to that social media platform. If an author wants to maintain independence from the 'borg' than that author must have an independent webpage with a blog that engages readers. (So when I tell someone that it's okay for her to shoot the rattlesnake in her front yard with her kids and dogs, I'm not thrown into facebook jail. Or when I call my cow 'fat.')

So my goal is to get back to blogging on the laptop and then just forward those blog posts to social media. That way the control is back in the hands of the author. And go check out my latest book, Wet Noses & World Domination. The swag items are rolling in now and so soon I will have some giveaways of coffee mugs, book marks, stickers, signed books, etc. for folks who post "shelfie" pictures of themselves, or their dogs (or other critters! For Farm Fresh Forensics people posted pictures of that book with their cows, pigs, geeze, ducks, and horses!)