I think this is the best mystery so far by Lucy Emblem, set in the mystical Malvern Hills. Sixth in the Tamsin Kernick series finds our eponymous heroine signing up for a photography class. Someone is about to be SNAPPED AND FRAMED!

There are dogs, as usual, but trust me, these dogs do not snap, they are far too well-trained. Tamsin’s dog pals accompany her into pet-tolerant cafés and on long healthy autumn walks. As a professional dog trainer, she’d love good photos of her canines and of the scenery, so learning to get better with her smartphone camera seems like a no-brainer. Jean-Philippe’s café is the venue for a series of classes, held in an upstairs room by an expert and drawing some new characters to town. Everyone is assigned homework based on what they are learning.

A few weeks into the class, the main bit of gossip is a string of petty thefts in the area. Nothing of any great value – so far. The crime escalates sharply when a senior woman attending the class, is found dead in a car park at a hiking route for Midsummer Hill. Can anyone’s photos hold information? Tamsin, with her best friends Emerald, Charity and reporter Feargal from Malvern Mercury, the local paper, start investigating.

Earlier books focused on market stalls, goats’ cheese and delicious baking, or a lively bunch of cyclists. The same characters return in this story, so anyone who’s been following will smile at familiar names, but SNAPPED AND FRAMED! can certainly work as a standalone. 

I love that a great deal of information is imparted about improving your smartphone photography. A while ago, a friend told me she’d got a good DSLR camera and I asked, “Where is it now?” “At home,” she replied after a second. “You should get better at using the camera you carry all the time, which is the one on your phone,” I told her. Lucy Emblem demonstrates for us that you don’t need fancy equipment and lighting to improve your results, and knowing what you are doing to take one set of photos will improve your work with every camera. The author also demonstrates the worth of a well-trained dog, who saves the day more than once in this exciting light English mystery.