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Dead in the Water: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

Dead in the Water: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

List Price: $5.99
Your Price: $5.39
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Daisy and Alec are invited for a weekend at the boat races
Review: Daisy and Alec are to be the guests of Daisy's aunt Lady Cherington for the Thames Cup boat races. Daisy's cousin Tish's beau, and his teammates, including Tish's cousin Cherry. There is some discord in the team. The Hon Basil DeLancy, an out an out cad, is baiting the cox, a Mr. Bott for not being as well borne or socially apt as the rest of them. Harold Bott has a huge chip on his shoulder and responds just as DeLancey wants him to. This all cumulates in DeLancey pushing Bott in the river after he disgraces himself by being sick during the race. Since DeLancey got him drunk the night before it really was his fault. Then, DeLancey dies after becoming sick during a four man race. Bott is naturally a suspect, and Alec takes over the case. He and Daisy seek the murderer.

These golden age mysteries are alot of fun. The murderer was fairly obvious, but getting to the conclusion was still worth reading. The author has a real gift for describing England in the 1920's.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Daisy and Alec are invited for a weekend at the boat races
Review: Daisy and Alec are to be the guests of Daisy's aunt Lady Cherington for the Thames Cup boat races. Daisy's cousin Tish's beau, and his teammates, including Tish's cousin Cherry. There is some discord in the team. The Hon Basil DeLancy, an out an out cad, is baiting the cox, a Mr. Bott for not being as well borne or socially apt as the rest of them. Harold Bott has a huge chip on his shoulder and responds just as DeLancey wants him to. This all cumulates in DeLancey pushing Bott in the river after he disgraces himself by being sick during the race. Since DeLancey got him drunk the night before it really was his fault. Then, DeLancey dies after becoming sick during a four man race. Bott is naturally a suspect, and Alec takes over the case. He and Daisy seek the murderer.

These golden age mysteries are alot of fun. The murderer was fairly obvious, but getting to the conclusion was still worth reading. The author has a real gift for describing England in the 1920's.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: top notch mystery with period flavor and good red herrings
Review: I found plenty of charm and action in this "between thewars" murder mystery. With a twist on the country house party,Carola Dunn puts her slueth, the honourable Daisy Dalrymple, journalist, under the same roof as 9 sporting young men, all members of the same college crew, ranging from the working class cox to the young lording, whom everyone seems to have reason to dislike. But when the latter is found with his head bashed in, the most likely suspect seems the former. Scotland Yard, in the form of Daisy's detective fiance is called in, and they soon discovers plenty of other suspects to muddy the waters. The period details add to the well-plotted mystery, and Daisy is as delightful as usual.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Daisy deal s with social class prejudice obscuring crime.
Review: In this Daisy adventure social class biases are a major factor confounding efforts to find the guilty. Daisy's 1920s acquaintances with their prejudices are so different from us modern enlightened folks, aren't they? Or are they? Carola Dunn's meticulous research shows us a heroine who is convincingly of her time, but whose enquiring mind rises above social conventions.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Definitely not a character study!
Review: My first problem with this book was trying to keep the characters straight. (They all seemed interchangeable.) But that problem was soon solved, because I didn't care about any of them enough to try to keep track of them. Which left the setting (the best part of the book) and the plot (not exactly spell-binding). I don't plan to read any others in this series.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A fun book!
Review: Set in 1923 England, this series follows the adventures of the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple, a young woman who has defied convention by choosing to make her own living (as a journalist) rather than let her aristocratic family support her.

In this, the sixth of the series (preceded by "Damsel in Distress" and followed by "Styx and Stones"), Daisy visits relatives at Henley-on-Thames while researching her latest writing assignment, an article on the Henley Royal Regatta. Daisy's relatives' house is packed to the gills with people in town for the Regatta, including the rowing team from Oxford's Ambrose College, who will compete. Needless to say, there is lots of friction between all these people for a variety of reasons, and eventually, one of the rowing team turns up dead just in time to spoil Daisy's weekend plans with her fiance, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard.

This book is not quite up to the high standards of the others in this series because the suspects all blur together so easily. The individual members of the rowing team all seem more or less the same and are, as far as the reader is concerned, easily dismissed as true suspects. There are only four or so characters truly depicted in-depth, so it becomes very clear that one of them must be the murderer. This is not how a mystery reader likes to solve the mystery.

The recurring characters, however, are as well done and enjoyable as ever, and the little jealousies between the newly engaged Alec and Daisy are fun. Once again, Dunn has created a clever and realistic "set-up" for the mystery, and her depiction of time and place cannot be beat.


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