If like me you have been with Kitty since the beginning then it is a delight to see that she is embracing married life with Matt Bryant and getting more involved in the private investigations.
However that doesn’t stop her being involved with The Dolphin hotel now being run by a manager. To celebrate the Silver Jubilee of the King, it is up to the hotel to stage a Beauty Pageant, what could possibly go wrong?
Well poison pen letters, some strange looking characters and then a couple of dead bodies, it seems this is going to be a beauty pageant that Dartmouth will not forget for a while. But the new inspector, who Kitty and Matt have encountered from previous cases thinks there is nothing amiss and it is all straightforward and the culprit will be easy to catch. Especially if the amateurs do not assist.
But that is okay because Matt and Kitty have been hired to look into Victoria, stepdaughter of Sir Vivian, a well known Egyptologist. He thinks she has fallen in with a bad lot and there is mention of drugs which doesn’t seem to bode well for Victoria. Trouble is Victoria is down to be in the beauty pageant and it seems this private case and the one the police are working on are connected and they are going to have work together.
Although we are on book twelve of this series, as our main characters have now got married there is a shift in the tone of the book, as they enter the next part of their life. Plenty of familiar characters are still present and I hope we get to spend more time with the delightful Alice and members of her family whoa re we getting to know more about. Then of course there is Kitty’s grandmothers close friend; the formidable Mrs Craven who seems to remain Kitty’s thorn in her side and got her into this beauty pageant in the first place!
I look forward to seeing where Matt and Kitty end up next, and whether they can possibly solve a case without putting either of their lives at risk!
Thank you to the publisher via netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.
Murder at the Beauty Pageant is out now.
The Book Jotter 