‘The Secret Sauce’ by MJ Porter

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Secret Sauce, via Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources

Blurb

Birmingham, England, November 1944. Chief Inspector Mason of Erdington Police Station is summoned to a suspicious death at the BB Sauce factory in Aston on a wet Monday morning in late November 1944.

Greeted by his enthusiastic sergeant, O’Rourke, Sam Mason finds himself plunged into a challenging investigation to discover how Harry Armstrong met his death in a vat containing BB Sauce – a scene that threatens to put him off BB Sauce on his bacon sandwiches for the rest of his life.

Together with Sergeant O’Rourke, Mason follows a trail of seemingly unrelated events until something becomes very clear. The death of Harry Armstrong was certainly murder, and might well be connected to the tragedy unfolding at nearby RAF Fauld. While the uncertainty of war continues, Mason and O’Rourke find themselves seeking answers from the War Office and the Admiralty, as they track down the person who murdered their victim in such an unlikely way.

Join Mason and O’Rourke for the third book in the quirky, historical mystery series, as they once more attempt to solve the impossible in 1940s Erdington.

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

A suspicious death at the BB Sauce factory prompts Chief Inspector Mason to start an investigation. Along with his female sergeant, O’Rourke, Mason must work out what caused the death of factory worker Harry Armstrong. Found in a vat of the secret BB sauce, did the man commit suicide, or is there something more sinister going on? Mason soon decides that someone wanted Armstrong dead – but why?

Set in England in November 1944, this is book three in the Erdington Mysteries. As with the other books, The Secret Sauce can be read as a standalone. This time we find Chief Inspector Sam Mason confused by a bizarre case where a man appears to have drowned in brown sauce. Apart from the fact the man shouldn’t have been in the factory in the first place, Mason is perplexed by missing sauce bottles. Could the dead man have set up his own illegal supply of the popular sauce, or does Armstrong’s war record include something dodgy, and if so, did someone find about it? Then there’s the discovery of two mysterious lines of letters and a date – 1944. Could it be some sort of code, and who was it intended for? Aside from the murder, Mason hears about an explosion in an ordnance store at a local RAF base. Could this too have something to do with the dead man?

The details of day-to-day life such as wartime shortages add to the story and bring it to life, just as in the other books in the series. Having said that, I don’t think this one is quite up to Ms Porter’s usual standard, which is a shame. Nevertheless, it’s a great story that kept me turning the pages right to the end.

Purchase Link

Author Bio

I’m an author of historical fiction and non-fiction (Early English (Saxon), Vikings and the British Isles as a whole before the Norman Conquest, as well as five twentieth-century mysteries), born in the old Mercian kingdom at some point since the end of 1066. Historical mysteries allow me to use such modern inventions as the telephone and the car, which is very exciting when I spend so much of my time worrying about feeding the horses my warriors usually ride.

I was raised in the shadow of a strange little building and told from a very young age it housed the bones of long-dead kings of Mercia, it’s little wonder my curiosity in the early English ran riot. I can only blame my parents!

I like to write. You’ve been warned!

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