Whistle Stop Murder
A Poppy James Cozy Mystery #3
by Gemma Harper
Published: October 31, 2025
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Cozy Animal Mystery, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Short Reads
Blurb:
A quiet town, a ghostly whistle, and one café owner with a nose for trouble…
When a midnight train whistle echoes through
Willowbrook’s sleepy streets, Poppy James—book-loving café owner
and accidental sleuth—knows it’s more than a trick of the wind.
Her suspicions are confirmed when Henry Caldwell, a retired railway
inspector with a reputation for secrets, is found dead by the
abandoned tracks, a chalk mark scrawled beside him and a crumpled
scrap of paper in his hand.
Armed with her trusty beagle Midsip, glitter-obsessed best friend Nadine, and history-buff Theo, Poppy dives into a tangle of ledgers, tunnels, and old town scandals. Everyone in Willowbrook seems to have something to hide—especially the two people Henry crossed paths with just before everything went wrong: Mark Jeffries, the carpenter Henry hired to “fix” a hidden room in the old depot the night he disappeared; and Clara Benton, whose gossip column ran a blind item that outed Henry’s sealed dealings—and gave someone a reason to silence him.
As clues mount and the Circle’s shadow grows, Poppy finds herself toe-to-toe with secrets worth killing for. If she can’t piece together the truth, Willowbrook’s quiet nights may never be safe again.
My Review:
Whistle Stop Murder is the third book in the Poppy James Cozy Mystery series by Gemma Harper. Whistle Stop Murder starts off with the death of Henry Caldwell, a retired railway inspector. The local sheriff says it was an accident that he tripped on the train track, but Poppy, Theo, and Nadine don’t believe it for one minute.
Poppy sets out to prove that it was not an accident and finds a town full of secrets, deadly secrets, unfortunately for Henry. Henry was a nice, quiet man with secrets of his own. Undoubtedly, someone revealed one of those secrets, and now Henry has paid the price for that secret.
The people of Willowbrook have numerous secrets they want to stay hidden. How much farther are they willing to go to ensure they stay that way?
Whistle Stop Murder kept me engaged from the beginning when Poppy saw Henry lying there beside the train tracks. The mystery and suspense that followed had me hooked, not able to turn the pages as fast as I wanted, leaving me with many questions that I wanted/needed answers to as quick as I could get them.
I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Whistle Stop Murder today to find out what happened to Henry.
Check out all the books in the Poppy James Cozy Mystery Series I’ve read.
Caffeine and a Corpse
NightBlooms and a Burial #1
Killer Crust #2
Whistle Stop Murder #3
0 comments:
Post a Comment