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feather_ghyllDie Laughing: Carola Dunn Robinson 2011
For various reasons, I’ve read this murder mystery in snatches, a chapter or two here, a chapter or two there. Although it’s a whodunit, this worked out well. I didn’t have any firm suspicions until the very last few chapters, when it appeared as if I was wrong. But the book is as much concerned with domestic matters, amplified by the setting.
Daisy Dalrymple is now Mrs Alec Fletcher, and they have settled in to life in professional, middle class London. Daisy’s mother-in-law lives with them, disapproving of Daisy – not being of their class, not doing things like bringing up Belinda, her stepdaughter properly, although Belinda seems like a happy child, calling Daisy ‘Mummy’ quite naturally, and Daisy and Alec are very much in love.
Mrs Fletcher (senior) is even more disapproving when Daisy stumbles upon a dead body and sees clues that suggest it was a murder. Although, as Daisy points out to her policeman husband, she couldn’t exactly help it. She was turning up to a dental appointment with their neighbour and acquaintance Mr Talmadge.
This means walking into an unhappy marriage, with unfaithfulness on both sides, leading to plenty of suspects. As Daisy and Alec work through what the servants knew and listen to gossip, the mother-in-law is horrified. Alec mostly has to give up on keeping Daisy out of the case, as her ability to get everyone to talk to her remains undimmed, and the murder was right among them.
Daisy even gets an idea for an article about ‘the servant problem’ out of it. Well, the murder is solved, but not after there’s another death, but the situation with Mrs Fletcher, who had come to live with Alec and Belinda after his first wife’s death, remains unresolved. Cosy – but not glossing over the horror of death, the ugliness of adultery or the cruelty of gossip - the maturing of Daisy and her relationship with Alec is woven in particularly well to the plot here. And Dunn makes use of most people’s ambivalent feelings about dentists.
For various reasons, I’ve read this murder mystery in snatches, a chapter or two here, a chapter or two there. Although it’s a whodunit, this worked out well. I didn’t have any firm suspicions until the very last few chapters, when it appeared as if I was wrong. But the book is as much concerned with domestic matters, amplified by the setting.
Daisy Dalrymple is now Mrs Alec Fletcher, and they have settled in to life in professional, middle class London. Daisy’s mother-in-law lives with them, disapproving of Daisy – not being of their class, not doing things like bringing up Belinda, her stepdaughter properly, although Belinda seems like a happy child, calling Daisy ‘Mummy’ quite naturally, and Daisy and Alec are very much in love.
Mrs Fletcher (senior) is even more disapproving when Daisy stumbles upon a dead body and sees clues that suggest it was a murder. Although, as Daisy points out to her policeman husband, she couldn’t exactly help it. She was turning up to a dental appointment with their neighbour and acquaintance Mr Talmadge.
This means walking into an unhappy marriage, with unfaithfulness on both sides, leading to plenty of suspects. As Daisy and Alec work through what the servants knew and listen to gossip, the mother-in-law is horrified. Alec mostly has to give up on keeping Daisy out of the case, as her ability to get everyone to talk to her remains undimmed, and the murder was right among them.
Daisy even gets an idea for an article about ‘the servant problem’ out of it. Well, the murder is solved, but not after there’s another death, but the situation with Mrs Fletcher, who had come to live with Alec and Belinda after his first wife’s death, remains unresolved. Cosy – but not glossing over the horror of death, the ugliness of adultery or the cruelty of gossip - the maturing of Daisy and her relationship with Alec is woven in particularly well to the plot here. And Dunn makes use of most people’s ambivalent feelings about dentists.
