Mostly Murders

Book 2 in the Francine Witt Mystery series.

Bottled Up resumes the action where book 1, Full Bodied ended, with Francine Witt on a mission to tell the story of Penelope Radcliffe, archaeologist and grandmother of Rosalind Downing, who is accompanying Francine as her research assistant. As the two of them begin to look into Penelope’s research, they come upon countless references to the idea of memory being preserved and bottled like wine to be used in ancient rituals.

What at first sounds like a metaphor soon proves to be more substantial than that, and the seemingly simple task of researching the work of a 1950s female archaeologist quickly turns into a dangerous international adventure, sending Francine and Rosalind halfway around the world searching for bottles and clues while a sinister presence watches their every move.

Much like its predecessor, Full Bodied, Bottled Up is a story of wine and feminism, but this time the Egyptology is replaced with a more general history theme. To shake things up even more, Steve Exeter introduces an esoteric mystery, leaving the confines of realism for a foray into the world of mystical, ancient rituals and predestined fates that may require a bit of suspension of belief on the part of the reader.

But Bottled Up doesn’t ignore the realm of reality. Fuelled by a deep love for history and a burning desire to represent the silenced and marginalised female voices in the ocean of male-dominated history, this novel asks some very important questions about representation and leaves the reader with a reassuring message. History isn’t just something that is created around us, it is something we are all a part of, and each and every one of us has the opportunity to make ourselves the guardians and custodians of our own history, representing it and sharing it with the world as we see fit.

Thank you so much to Steve Exeter for the review copy of this book.

Cozy mystery – Contemporary