Die Laughing

Wouldn't you know that a visit to the dentist would result in a dead body, at least it would for Daisy. Digging into the man's life reveils a long history of adultery on the part of both the man and his wife. What is amazing is that the all the rather messy relationship issues don't bog down the books breezy tone. Also, this is the book where Alex's difficult mother finally moves out, leaving Alex and Daisy in charge of their own house.

1920s, England, friendship, family-dynamics, situational-humor, verbal-humor, cosy-mystery, murder-investigation, law-enforcement, scandal, relationships, historical-novel, historical-research*****

This one is more of a soap opera than a farce, but it's still funny and the sleuthing is pretty good. The publisher's blurb is a fair hook but doesn't even mention the dreaded mother-in-law. Spiffing good read.
Lucy Rayner does a fine job of narrating.

This is frankly subpar. The plot is on so small a scale and the suspects in so low a number that I found the story deeply dull at times, more so because I guessed the identity of one of the murderers fairly early. It's happened before, even with more veteran authors such as Christie (I'm thinking about Cards on the Table here) but it's been usually compensated with interesting character backgrounds. None of that here and the dialogue is too redundant to be of real interest - how many times can you have Alec described in exactly the same way and how many times can you have the housekeeper and the nurse quarrel? I wouldn't recommend this one, the only truly engrossing detail was Daisy's musings on her next magazine article about the show more evolution of domestic service. Her insight was particularly well-developped and very welcome. show less

Daisy has a tooth problem and decides to go to a local dentist, only to find that the dentist is dead. She has to cope with the aftermath and the gossip and at the same time deal with her new life as a wife and mother.

It's interesting and also having Daisy finding new friends in this community is going to lead to some interesting future things to happen. But seriously she has the worst luck with people she interacts with.

Daisy has toothache but her toothache disappears when she discovers her dentist dead in his surgery. Is it an accident, suicide or murder? Its nice to finally have a book set in London so we get to see Daisy and Alec at home. Although this is a relatively serious instalment in the series as Daisy settles into middle class married life in St John's Wood. I did guess the identity of the murderer quite early on but the twists and turns of the plot made this a fairly enjoyable read.

This was an older Daisy Dalrymple mystery. I don't remember reading it but it was quite good. It was interesting see the early part of Alec's and Daisy's marriage and also meet Mrs. Prasad early on. The mystery was a good one although the killer was obvious to me early on. However, there were enough red herrings to obscure her identity legitimately for the book's detectives.

While Daisy dreads her visit to the dentist, she is comforted in knowing him socially and by reputation. However, when she finds Talmadge in his own dental chair with the gas mask on, she raises an alarm. While the immediate assumption is suicide, she sees evidence of murder. As Alec tries to navigate the investigation in his own social circles, secrets are revealed but the murderer remains elusive until the very end.