Blog Tour: Guest Post: Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder by Suzy K Quinn

Posted on September 19, 2026 inBlog Tour

Today I am sharing a guest post as a part of the blog tour for Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder by Suzy K Quinn. She is sharing with us about Bob and Shirley and her thoughts on ‘strong couples’ making the relationship work. Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder was released on July 8th. What’s even better is that Suzy is having an international giveaway!

Book Description:

Bob and Shirley run a lovely country pub. They also solve murders …

A warmly funny, gloriously British cozy crime and murder mystery series that can be read as standalones or part of a series. Set in a village where the pub is the heart of country life and served with warmth, wit and a very good Sunday roast.

“Murder? In our quiet, little English village?

Great Oakley is a place of hanging baskets, tearooms and riverside walks. We’ve won ‘Britain’s safest village’ 10 years running. I keep three pound coins, a box of toffees and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my dashboard at all times, and I’ve never needed to lock my car.

Certainly, Bevvy Hogg was disliked. She ran the local Waist Watchers group, yet came to our pub for fish and chips, treacle tart and a bottle of Chardonnay every Friday. But I don’t think she was murdered …”

When Bevvy Hogg is found dead in the Goose and Gander pub garden, with an empty treacle tart plate beside her and several dress sizes slimmer than anyone remembers, Great Oakley’s winning streak as Britain’s safest village comes to an abrupt end.

Buy Your Copy Here:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Meet Bob and Shirley – a couple who argue every day, run a pub and solve murders

I have a theory about relationships. A strong couple are opposites. They complete each other because they are different. Which also means that a healthy couple argue. And yes, I am speaking from personal experience.

When I wrote the Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder is my new murder mystery / cozy mystery series. I leaned heavily into personal experiences of my daily marital bickering to write about a totally new type of detective – the arguing married couple.

My husband and I love each other to the moon and back. Honestly, we do! But if you were to record a conversation in our household, you might think otherwise.

Our usual daily chat goes something like this:

Me: ‘Why are you keeping this? It’s a used train ticket. It has no purpose. We need to throw it away.

Demi: ‘It’s the train ticket I used to see the Arsenal play … [insert some meaningless football chat I’m not interested in] and they won the match and it has sentimental value and it’s also lucky.

Me: ‘No, it isn’t. It’s litter.’

Demi: ‘You have no heart.’

Me: ‘Possibly, true. Throw it away or I will.’

We also argue about the dishwasher. He believes a plate should go in the moment it leaves the table. I believe a plate should sit on the side, gathering its thoughts, until there are enough plates to make loading the dishwasher a proper job worth doing. He calls this letting it build up. I call it efficiency.

 

Bob and Shirley are similarly argumentative. They run a historic, country pub together in the chocolate box village of Great Oakley, argue constantly … and solve murders and other mysteries.

Bob is an ex-fireman who grows his own vegetables, bakes his own wholemeal bread and makes elderflower cordial with no sugar in it. He cuts his own hair with nail scissors. And when God was handing out charm, Bob was at the back of the line correcting someone’s grammar.

Shirley is a landlady who thinks a little of what you fancy does you good, and then has rather a lot of it. She has never met a prosecco she didn’t like. She thinks Bob’s homemade cordial tastes of hedge.

They bicker constantly. About tea (she puts the milk in last, he puts it in first and has never told her). About whether the pub quiz brings the community together or drives it apart. About whether you can run a non-alcoholic bar at a village fitness event without causing a riot.

And they have a very happy marriage.

Because Bob notices things. He is the one with the gardening clipboard, making notes for the paramedics, spotting the odd yellow mark on the flagstones that nobody else saw. He is thorough and clever and completely hopeless with people.

Shirley is the one people actually talk to. She can walk into a room full of suspects and come out twenty minutes later knowing everything, because she has a landlady’s ear and no shame whatsoever about using it.

Separately, they would never solve a thing. Bob would be thrown out of every interview he attempted (and in book one, he is). Shirley would collect all the gossip in Suffolk and never work out what any of it meant.

Together, they are rather good at solving mysteries.

I don’t think opposites attract by accident. I think we choose people who are strong where we are weak, and then we spend the rest of our lives being mildly irritated by the exact thing that makes them useful.

My husband’s sentimentality drives me up the wall. It is also the reason our house is full of things that mean something.

My ruthlessness with the bin bags drives him mad. It is also the reason we can find anything.

So if you and your other half argue every day about something completely ridiculous, I would say you are doing rather well.

Just don’t ask me to load the dishwasher after every finished cup of tea.

Bob and Shirley’s Guide to Murder is a new murder mystery / cozy mystery series. All these books are available on Kindle Unlimited.

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About the Author:

Suzy K Quinn (hello – it’s me!) is writing this bio in the third person. Which feels duplicitous and also a little egotistical. But here goes …

Suzy K Quinn writes book club books and murder mystery series, and has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. She’s a bestselling author in the US, UK and Germany and will soon, very possibly, have written more books than she’s read.

Suzy lives in Wivenhoe, Essex, with her husband and two daughters. She is a twin, an incompetent parent of two and now fully decaffeinated. Her twin sister, Cate Quinn, is also a bestseller author. When Suzy isn’t writing in cafes, she is walking around woods dictating like a lunatic.

Contact Suzy:
Website
Facebook Group

Tiktok @suzykquinn
Instagram @suzykquinn
Twitter @suzykquinn
Threads @suzykquinn

Giveaway:

Win an e-copy of Bob and Shirley’s Killer Cuppa Puzzle: Open Internationally!

One of Great Oakley’s five open gardens served poisoned tea. Can you work out which one before Bob does?

‘Like Murdle and a cozy mystery rolled into one.’

Murder mystery logic puzzle stories for fans of The Killer Isn’t Alice, Murdle and Can You Solve the Murder?

These are ‘Puzzlories’. Read them like stories, solve them like puzzles. Each one takes about an hour to read and solve.

It’s Open Gardens weekend in Great Oakley. Five gardeners have opened their gardens to the public, and each is offering a unique drink, cake, flower and interesting garden feature to their fellow villagers.

Unfortunately, one garden owner poured poisoned tea. Probably not on purpose. But you never know. There are more murders in Britain’s safest village than you might imagine.

Village pub landlady Shirley Duffy visited all five open gardens before returning to the Goose and Gander for a much-needed beer and a sit down. One of those five gardens was the scene of the crime.

The trouble is, Shirley’s memory is known to be … selective. She can remember every cake she’s eaten since 1987, but not necessarily when and where she ate it. And she can’t remember which garden served tea on Saturday afternoon.

Shirley’s husband, Bob, is frustrated that Shirley can’t remember one garden from another. But he finds many things about his wife frustrating, and loves her anyway.

As Bob presses Shirley for details, the clues pile up. Your job is to note them down and work out who served the tea before Bob does.

Twenty clues, one in every short chapter. Fill in your detective’s grid, cross off your suspects and name the poisoner.

Grab your notebook, put the kettle on (carefully) and see if you can beat Bob to the answer.

ENTER TO WIN HERE. 

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Gleam box above.  The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

See the entire blog tour: