Styx and Stones – Carola Dunn

She may be an honourable but that does not stop Daisy Dalrymple taking a free lunch when she can get one, in one of the more posh parts of London.  However there is no such thing as a free lunch as she discovers when lunching with her brother in law. He has an ulterior motive. Can Daisy help him find out who is sending poison pen letters to him, and quite possibly other people in the village where he lives. He does not want his secrets to come out and upset his wife.

Daisy cannot resist a bit of sleuthing all rather amateurishly as she knows that if her fiancée Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard finds out she is up to something, he will not be pleased.  An innocent visit to her sister, with Alec’s daughter Belinda in tow, seems like the perfect cover.

Daisy finds that the village is teeming with gossip and hatred, and it could be a number of people who have put pen to paper. Without trying it is Daisy that discovers a body and suddenly it seems her cover of simply visiting her sister innocently could be blown. Alec is not going to be pleased putting herself as well as his daughter in potential danger.

This is the seventh Daisy Dalrymple mystery and I think that Carola Dunn has hit her stride with this book. It has just the right amount of class divide, big house in a village, gossips, red herrings and childish antics to make you fly through the pages. Of course it is always going to be alright and the culprit is going to be caught but there is always that maybe moment or too.

Great escapist mysteries, where there is very little violence (notwithstanding murder of course) but it is not a gory tale and the setting makes you think that Miss Marple is going to pop up at any moment and offer some assistance. A great fun read.

I am going to enjoy picking up the next one of these novels and I have plenty more to get through. This is book 7 and book 21 comes out at the end of the year. Just one more for this year will see me complete one of my challenges too!