Death Wears a Mask, Ashley Weaver

Death Wears a Mask is another competent cozy-ish mystery in the same vein as the first, with the side plot of Amory’s playboy husband being, well, a playboy. There’s a fair bit of relationship drama here, where he gets into compromising situations and she refuses to quite believe he’s faithful to her. Plenty of misunderstandings on her side, while he’s actually mostly perfect (cares about her, acts wild but is faithful, etc). Spare me. I hope the oh-no-is-he-cheating drama is over as of this book, because yeesh.

The mystery itself was somewhat predictable, as was the resolution of the relationship drama. The attraction remains that it’s just a really easy and fast read, without being too involving emotionally or too full of guts and gore. A mild pleasure rather than something that bowled me over in any fashion.

Actually, I’m so lukewarm on this and only a little warmer on the following book (which I’ve already read — I’m just behind on actually writing up my reviews) that I wonder why I’m continuing with the series when I have so many lovely things to read.

Rating: 2/5

Damsel in Distress, Carola Dunn

In this instalment of the Daisy Dalrymple series, Philip falls in love, and immediately gets into a scrape. Daisy, of course, is pretty glad to hear about the lucky girl (it gets Philip off her back, and after all she wants him to be happy) and immediately plunges into trouble to help rescue her when something goes wrong. Alec comes into the story later, and mostly unofficially, with plenty of derring-do and dramatic rescue attempts on the part of all concerned.

In a way, there’s not much to say about this book: it’s fairly predictable as far as the fact that you know Daisy is going to get into all the trouble there is to get into, and figure out most of the salient points (with Alec not doing so badly either, of course). Things turn out pretty much okay at the end, not to mention the fact that Alec and Daisy end the book engaged.

The series remains a lot of fun, and rather wholesome fun at that. If you can’t bear Phryne Fisher’s taste in men, it’s a good alternative for a cosy mystery series.

Rating: 4/5

The Division Bell Mystery, Ellen Wilkinson

I was fascinated to read about the background of the author of this book: she sounds like a really interesting person, one of the first female MPs, and really dedicated to her work and her constituents. Respected across party lines, too! I was a little worried that her work was included for the novelty of the author being an actual MP writing about a mystery set in the Commons, but it’s competently done and the little personality sketches feel so real. She didn’t overwhelm the work with her actual knowledge, but she definitely used it to advantage.

The mystery itself isn’t exactly revolutionary, and her female femme-fatale style character (and the male reactions to her within the story) were so very, very typical of the period, but the ending brings in a surprisingly real note of pathos, and the setting is somewhat unique. It comes together into an enjoyable little amateur detective story, with some funny lines, some interesting details, and some surprisingly vivid thumbnail sketches of a few characters. I enjoyed it enough to rank it a cut above the sort of baseline enjoyment I’ve had with other British Library Crime Classics.

Rating: 4/5

Requiem for a Mezzo, Carola Dunn

The Daisy Dalrymple books are definite cosies: mostly victims the reader will dislike, while the real culprit is never someone the reader is meant to like, or had a really good reason if they are; a ‘clean’ romance, with Alec and Daisy decorously falling in love with only hints here and there of physical lust; blood and guts minimised. Requiem for a Mezzo continues in that vein as expected, with the poisoning of a woman who rather made the lives of everyone around her miserable — a literal diva who has made a career for herself as a singer at the expense of her sister. The villain is not quite as expected, mind you — but I won’t spoil that part for you.

The investigation goes along as expected: various suspects, the weird complication of a Ukrainian terrorist group (an issue mostly skirted around and not used to full potential), plenty of red herrings. Daisy remains likeable, though not someone I’d ever invite round to my house (someone would be sure to die). She’s a little bit too perfect, despite her unfashionably rounded figure and her freckles (it all just makes her sound comfortable and cute to the modern reader), but she gets away with it. Alec isn’t too clever, but avoids ever relying hopelessly on Daisy’s help. It’s all within the bounds of tolerability — this makes it sound like I’m damning the books with faint praise, which is not my intention: I deeply enjoy them for the cosy mysteries they are.

I found the resolution of this one maybe a little too pat. I don’t believe in the motive, and feel like we ended the book without an answer as to who was the real culprit. But it’s still fun, and there were some lovely character moments: not just Daisy and Alec, but little glimpses of other people’s thoughts and feelings that make it feel a little more real.

Rating: 4/5

The Winter Garden Mystery, Carola Dunn

No surprises that I picked up the next Daisy Dalrymple book pretty quickly — they’re just the perfect length for a long soak in the bath followed by a lazy evening, which is exactly how I’ve been reading them. I continue to enjoy the fact that Daisy’s a worker (although helped significantly by her class), and her relationship with Alec and his team; Phillip Petrie is rather a dear, despite being rather daft. His class-conscious snobbery fades away quickly as soon as he talks to someone for a while and discovers some things in common.

The new characters for this book are rather fun too: Lady Valeria is, of course, a battleaxe, while Roberta’s stubbornness is a joy. I called Sebastian’s relationships with various characters: it seemed very obvious up-front. I didn’t expect to like him, actually: he displays a pretty weak will to begin with, and a tendency to be led astray from what he should hold to — but in the end, he displays a bit of backbone and it really works. Ben was my favourite of the new characters, perhaps predictably: he sees some of the loneliness in Daisy’s past and is one of those people who reaches out and starts to help heal the wounds a little (brought on by her late love having been a conscientious objector, killed while driving an ambulance, and the way most people viewed him as a coward).

The mystery itself is solid enough providing you care enough about the characters to care about the outcome. When viewing the country house to write an article about it, Daisy sees a dead rosebush and comments on it. Once it has been dug up, however, a dead body is revealed — the body of a housemaid everyone thought had run off with a travelling salesman, who turns out to have been pregnant when she died. Daisy involves herself immediately on behalf of the young Welsh gardener (ugh, I was not convinced by his phonetically rendered accent) first accused of the murder, and calls Alec straight in. Of course, it’s a bit contrived — even twice all but falling over a dead body while visiting a stranger’s house for work is kind of unbelievable, so I do hope that there’ll be some variation on how Daisy gets involved as time goes on!

The central relationship of the books remains obvious, though it doesn’t develop too fast. Right now, Daisy and Alec are still thinking of the relationship as a possibility, despite their attraction to each other and the telling hints that they really do care. I’m looking forward to seeing this continue to develop.

All-in-all, still a fun cosy mystery, and Daisy is compelling enough a character for me to keep following the series — helped by the fact that I also care about Alec (as opposed to Amory and Milo in Ashley Weaver’s books, for example).

Rating: 4/5