REVIEW: Mistletoe and Murder
Dec. 27th, 2018 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMistletoe and Murder: Carola Dunn Constable and Robinson 2011
This is a Daisy Dalrymple mystery, and not to be confused with the Wells and Wong mystery with the same title which I posted about this time last year.
I kept this for reading over Christmas, as it would be seasonal, and it ended up being my Boxing Day read.
We are back to familiar ground after the travels of ‘To Davy Jones Below’ and ‘The Case of the Murdered Muckraker’, and having found the last book tiresome, I was glad enough to learn that Daisy would be spending her Christmas at a stately home in Cornwall and therefore so would we.
She was less glad. Although she is now Mrs Fletcher, her mother the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple informs her, as imperious as ever, that she has changed what was meant to be a working visit to Brockdene House into a family visit over Christmas. Daisy’s in-laws and sister are also ‘invited’. Both she and her mother are presuming upon a distant family connection with the Duke of Westmoor, but Daisy, at least, knows that he won’t be there.
Travelling to the not easily accessible house first to carry out research for an article, inquisitive Daisy finds there’s a rum set-up. There are servants, but their duty is to look after the house. Its inhabitants are poor relations who seem to live there under sufferance. If Daisy was worried about the impact her family party – reduced to her mother; Alec her husband, badly needing a holiday; Bel his daughter, her dog and Derek, Daisy’s nephew – would have, the eldest Norville son, a seafarer turns up with a dogmatic ex-missionary from India. Reverend Calloway does not approve of the way the English celebrate Christmas in the 1920s, such as the use of the mistletoe of the title. I had some sympathy with his view of the elastic definition of ‘carols’. He brings a great deal more tension than goodwill.
Everyone’s Christmas Day is ruined when he does not appear to take a family service, because…as is the way of holiday house parties in murder mysteries…he is dead. A reluctant Alec must investigate what is clearly a murder. Daisy is less reluctant, busy theorising on the basis of conversations she’s had and overheard. Even clues the children and Nana the dog unearth become important.
I had no idea who had done it, although I never bought the motive that the investigators were bandying about, It’s not top-flight writing, although Dunn plays fair with this plot. There are plenty of secrets and passion flying about, as well as class awareness that Daisy, unlike her mother, tries to combat with good manners.
Daisy is starting to comprehend what it means to be responsible for Bel, who she now sees as her daughter, and the disturbed teenage daughter of the house throws a positive light on Bel and Derek. Marriage and experience of Daisy make Alec barely bother trying to stop her from working on the case – his reward is for her to call him Chief as much as Tring and Piper do. Much more spiffing than ‘Muckraker’ anyway!
This is a Daisy Dalrymple mystery, and not to be confused with the Wells and Wong mystery with the same title which I posted about this time last year.
I kept this for reading over Christmas, as it would be seasonal, and it ended up being my Boxing Day read.
We are back to familiar ground after the travels of ‘To Davy Jones Below’ and ‘The Case of the Murdered Muckraker’, and having found the last book tiresome, I was glad enough to learn that Daisy would be spending her Christmas at a stately home in Cornwall and therefore so would we.
She was less glad. Although she is now Mrs Fletcher, her mother the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple informs her, as imperious as ever, that she has changed what was meant to be a working visit to Brockdene House into a family visit over Christmas. Daisy’s in-laws and sister are also ‘invited’. Both she and her mother are presuming upon a distant family connection with the Duke of Westmoor, but Daisy, at least, knows that he won’t be there.
Travelling to the not easily accessible house first to carry out research for an article, inquisitive Daisy finds there’s a rum set-up. There are servants, but their duty is to look after the house. Its inhabitants are poor relations who seem to live there under sufferance. If Daisy was worried about the impact her family party – reduced to her mother; Alec her husband, badly needing a holiday; Bel his daughter, her dog and Derek, Daisy’s nephew – would have, the eldest Norville son, a seafarer turns up with a dogmatic ex-missionary from India. Reverend Calloway does not approve of the way the English celebrate Christmas in the 1920s, such as the use of the mistletoe of the title. I had some sympathy with his view of the elastic definition of ‘carols’. He brings a great deal more tension than goodwill.
Everyone’s Christmas Day is ruined when he does not appear to take a family service, because…as is the way of holiday house parties in murder mysteries…he is dead. A reluctant Alec must investigate what is clearly a murder. Daisy is less reluctant, busy theorising on the basis of conversations she’s had and overheard. Even clues the children and Nana the dog unearth become important.
I had no idea who had done it, although I never bought the motive that the investigators were bandying about, It’s not top-flight writing, although Dunn plays fair with this plot. There are plenty of secrets and passion flying about, as well as class awareness that Daisy, unlike her mother, tries to combat with good manners.
Daisy is starting to comprehend what it means to be responsible for Bel, who she now sees as her daughter, and the disturbed teenage daughter of the house throws a positive light on Bel and Derek. Marriage and experience of Daisy make Alec barely bother trying to stop her from working on the case – his reward is for her to call him Chief as much as Tring and Piper do. Much more spiffing than ‘Muckraker’ anyway!
