I had to read a book in this series for my RL Mystery group. We pick an author/series and then each member can pick any book in it. Of course we all don't read the same book, so the discussions can be odd.

I usually try to start a series at the first book. And I tried with this one, but the bookstore wasn't able to get it (my order was canceled). So I had to start with this book which I believe is the 15th in the series.

Although this is my first book, yet the 15th in the series, I was pretty much able to pick everything up. Not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing.

The story is set in 1920s England, after WWI. The times are changing, servants are hard to find, women have short skirts, hair, and even smoke. They are not really respected, but many are unwilling to fade into the background. One of the themes running through the book was the social upheaval both within the upper class, and between classes.

The main character Daisy Dalrymple, an upper crust 'Lady' is also a journalist. I gather she started the series single, but has now married a Scotland Yard Detective, Alec Fletcher (not in her class). She no longer needs to support herself, but keeps working anyway. In this book she is hugely pregnant, and has gone to the country house of an old school friend to write about their Guy Fawkes celebration, for an American magazine.

Apparently her mother, an old fashioned woman is unhappy about Daisy's marrying beneath her. Daisy and several of the younger members of the upper class, find the old traditions, and mores ridiculous and too confining. The old members are of course all for holding the line against change. So in the book you end up with very stereotypical characters, complete with cheesy dialog from the 'lower orders'.

While at the house there is family upheaval going on because the son and heir, Jack, doesn't want to settle on the estate and run it; he wants to move to the city and become an aeronautical engineer. He brings his mentor, Miller, with him to convince his father; Miller and one of his sisters, Gwen are sweet on each other. Of course Miller is not top drawer so his parents are appalled on both counts: abandoning his duty, and introducing this man to his sister (suitable males of the right age are scarce, since so many were killed in the war).

There is a chance meeting in the local pub with an Australian couple (wife was once from the area), who have some mysterious connection, and are also not ‘posh’. Add in the fact that one of Jack's older sisters is actually running the farm and good at it, despite being a 'mere female', and you have lots of tensions and competing interests.

Everyone comes to the fireworks celebration, where of course there is a double killing.

The writing was mostly good, though there was a tendency to jump from one thing to another with no pacing to let the reader know that something new was starting. The setting, time period and some of the characters were well done. The major problem for me was that it wasn’t really a mystery.

The book is only a little over 300 pages. The murders don't happen until almost page 100. So you have about 100 pages of set up. While that isn’t bad for a period novel it really was too long for a short mystery.

Secondly we never see the crime scene. We only get the information when others talk about it or remember it. There are 2 people dead in a study, and we only have the characters’ word for what it looked like, or what they think happened. You only get any details when something is casually mentioned or even hinted at in conversation.

One of the jobs of the reader in a mystery is to try to determine which characters (if any) are lying. That job is impossible when there is no way to tell what the murder scene was really like, and who might be lying or making something up.

Finally although there was detecting going on, it was mostly perfunctory: insert Tab A into Slot B, type of thing. All very cut and dried and neatly laid out. It was obvious who the killer was, and of course stereotypically it was the last person one would suspect. I am not sure if the writer supplied the story with red herrings, if so, they were so weak that you didn’t really notice them, or in anyway end up taken in by them.

This is not a series I will pursue on my own. I have the feeling that only the settings and details will change, but reading one will be like reading them all. ( )

15th in the Daisy Dalrymple mystery series. Daisy, six months pregnant with her first child, visits Edge Manor, the home of an old school friend, to write an article about the family’s annual Guy Fawkes Day celebration for an American magazine.

Her stay is rather spoiled by the murder of her host and another guest, a visiting Australian woman invited on the spur of the moment. Naturally, with Daisy on the scene, her husband Alec Fletcher, a Detective Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard, is called in to investigate.

Aside from the Daisy Dalrymple series, Carola Dunn also writes the only Regency romances I’ve ever been able to stomach. No matter what genre she writes in, her stories are always comforting, perfect for a cold, grey day. They always cheer me up.

It doesn’t matter that I guessed the motive for the murderer, and the identity of the murderer, before the crime had even been committed; I don’t read these books to find out the solution to the mystery (although usually I don’t guess it ahead of time), but for the pleasure of reading a light, engaging novel about 1920’s England. ( )