Evan Can Wait (Evan Evans Mystery) [Import] [Hardcover]

Rhys Bowen (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd (October 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 072786307X
• ISBN-13: 978-0727863072
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,972,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rhys Bowen's books have been nominated for every major mystery award and she has won thirteen of them to date. She currently writes two historical mystery series, each very different in tone. The Molly Murphy mysteries feature an Irish immigrant woman in turn-of-the-century New York City. These books are multi-layered, complex stories with a strong sense of time and place and have won many awards including Agatha and Anthony. There are 10 book so far in this series plus the free Kindle story, The Amersham Rubies--a great way to introduce new readers to Molly's spunky personality.

Then there is Lady Georgie, Rhys's latest,and very popular, heroine. She's 34th in line to the throne of England, but she's flat broke and struggling to survive in the Great Depression. These books are lighter and funnier than Molly's adventures. They poke gentle fun at the British class system--about which Rhys knonws a lot, having married into an upper class family rather like Georgie's, with cousins with silly nicknames,family ghosts and stately homes. The fifth book, Naughty in Nice, is in stores now, and watch out for a big Christmas book in time for the 2012 holidays.
This year the series received the Readers Hoice Award for favorite mystery series.

Rhys was born in Bath, England and spent a lot of time growing up in Wales with her Welsh relatives. Those childhood experiences colored her first mystery series, about Constable Evans in the mountains of Snowdonia. 10 books including the Edgar nominee Evan's Gate. She has lived in Austria, Germany and Australia, but has called California her home for many years. She now escapes to a condo in Arizona during those cold California winters. When she's not writing she loves to travel, sing, hike and play the Celtic harp.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This author knows how to write delighful and atmospheric myt, January 17, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evan Can Wait (Constable Evans Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Everyone from the film crew to his partner Edward Ferrers to the townsfolk of Llanfair and even Evan Evans dislikes visiting documentary director Grantley Smith. Arrogance is an understatement when it comes to the overbearing and demanding Grantley. However, in spite of the conceited Grantley, there remains much excitement over the plans to film a documentary about the nearby sunken World War II Nazi bomber.

Evan's difficult assignment of keeping things smooth for the film crew turns ugly when someone kills Grantley, whose corpse is found in an abandoned mine. As Evan makes inquiries into the murder, he realizes how universally despised the victim was. He also learns that during World War II the crime scene mine was to serve as a place to hide stolen art. However, Evan struggles to find a link between the murder and the stolen art, making uncovering the identity of the culprit extremely difficult.

EVAN CAN WAIT is an entertaining Welsh cozy that provides readers with strong characterizations inside an intriguing plot. The two story lines cleverly tie together to make a powerful tale. In her fifth Evans novel, Rhys Bowen continues to furnish sub-genre fans with one of the better series on the market today.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evan Can Wait, March 13, 2001

By 

Sarah B. Garcia (Tempe, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evan Can Wait (Constable Evans Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Rhys Bowen's fifth book in the Constable Evan Evans series combines the gentle humor of the earlier books and a darker undercurrent arising from an incident during World War II. She gives us a glimpse of the effect the War had on the lives of the people of Northern Wales. This subplot along with the comic relief coming from the people of Llanfair make the book one of the best in the Evan Evan series.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A satisfying move forward in the series, March 8, 2002

By 

Suzanne B. Kelly (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evan Can Wait (Constable Evans Mysteries) (Paperback)

Many "cozy" mystery series are peppered with colorful characters, amusing inside jokes, and interesting locations. Bowen's Evan Evans series certainly fits this bill, but with "Evan Can Wait" the series moves into deeper, more interesting waters.

As usual, this book finds Evan Evans at home in Llanfair, an underappreciated sleuth whose fellow citizens are as colorful--and as hard to get to know--as the mountainous terrain. As usual, outsiders descend upon the town to wreak various sorts of havoc and get one of their number murdered.

But the mystery in "Evan Can Wait" takes a very satisying turn--we learn a great deal about Bronwen, the town schoolteacher who has been such a good-girl cipher up to this point, and we learn more about some of the darker parts of recent Welsh history, such as the life of a typical slate miner. Not only is there a recent murder to solve, but the murder has links to a decades-old crime and the two are tied together in a satisfying fashion at the end.

In short, it is still a light, amusing read, but with a little more depth to make the characters more real, the situations more complex, the ending a little more nuanced.