Free Short Stories by Carola Dunn. Also, a new book by Carola Dunn is on the Way!

So, I went wandering over to Carola Dunn's website to see if she has anything coming out soon--most especially to see if she has any Daisy Dalrymple books coming up. She does! For more, read on!

I also found that there are three short stories by her up on Belgravehouse.com, so I have downloaded them. I have not read them yet, as I only just found them, and, besides, I am in the middle of rereading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I have them.


So the book: Superfluous Women Daisy Dalrymple #22 (wow!) is coming out in June, 2015, and is a proper country house, locked room mystery.

The official description from Goodreads:

In England in the late 1920s, The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. The three, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of "superfluous women"—brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War.

Daisy and her husband Alec—Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard —go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine, but the stench of a long-dead body.

And with that, what was a pleasant Sunday lunch has taken an unexpected turn. Now Daisy's three friends are the most obvious suspects in a murder and her husband Alec is a witness, so he can't officially take over the investigation. So before the local detective, Superintendent Crane, can officially bring charges against her friends, Daisy is determined to use all her resources (Alec) and skills to solve the mystery behind this perplexing locked-room crime.

It sounds like this will be very much Daisy's story as Alec cannot be the lead investigator and so cannot take the story galloping off in some other direction the way he did in Anthem for Doomed Youth Mind, I liked Anthem for a Doomed Youth, and I like Alec, but I have read twenty-one books because Daisy is the heroine, and I don't want to see the series becoming the Alec Fletcher mysteries. He can have his own series, if he wants.

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Carola Dunn

Anthem for Doomed Youth, unlike previous Daisy Dalrymple books, is not set in a great country house. Instead, it focuses on Alec Fletcher's work solving a triple murder. In the meantime, Daisy has gone to Belinda's school to watch her stepdaughter's sports day, a nice, peaceful occupation that turns nasty when one of Belinda's friends finds a body in the local maze--a body which may or may not be connected to Alec's case.

The book was a page-turner, much more so than prior Daisy books--I've enjoyed all of them, but they have not been quite this intense. I wanted to find out what happened.

On the other hand, and this feels a bit mean, that is precisely the point where I have some complaint. This was much more Alec's book than Daisy's. I like Alec, but it's Daisy who drew me to the series in the first place. In Anthem for Doomed Youth, Alec's  case takes up the majority of the text. He and his growing crew of associates--many of whom I admit to hoping show up again--are the focus. The tone is also much more serious than is usual in the Dalrymple books. Nothing that would  move it into the territory of the hard-boiled mystery, but definitely veering to the very outermost edges of "cozy," and maybe a bit past.

Daisy's part, on the other hand, came a distant second, and it is fortunate Mel and Sakari were introduced in previous books (Mel, in fact, was slightly out of character, I think).  With so much focus on Alec's side of things, the newly introduced characters and potential suspects in Daisy's side of  things were never really around long enough for me to quite care what became of them. The fact that Belinda cares for them is something, but not, in the end, enough to make that section compelling. There was also a coincidence that I find stretched things a bit too far.

This isn't exactly a list of things wrong. I did enjoy the book, quite a bit, give or take the odd coincidence, but it wasn't quite what I was anticipating when I picked it up. Whether that is a fair complaint, or even exactly a complaint at all, is an issue for another day and time.

Sheer Folly: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery by Carola Dunn

She's back!

One of my concerns was that the combination of Black Ship and Manna from Hades meant that Dunn had gotten tired of Daisy. Sheer Folly ends that concern: Daisy is back with her optimism and curiosity intact. The mystery is back, too, without the contrived secrecy that made Black Ship problematic.

And 1920's England is back, too, just as crazy as ever.

Definitely a book worth curling up with (or reading under a nice shade tree by the bay, which is what I did).

Black Ship by Carola Dunn

The latest in the Daisy Dalrymple series, Black Ship is a bit of a letdown. It was good meeting the main characters again, and Daisy herself is as much fun as ever. The move to a new neighborhood and the business of meeting new neighbors and settling in are interesting and well handled.

It's the mystery that is a problem: For some reason, Dunn chose to include several chapters from the POV of a character who later becomes one of the main suspects. This means that the readers know who Patrick is and what he was doing well before Daisy does, and it is quite clear who the real murderer is. Daisy and Detective Fletcher only take as long as the do to figure it out because the suspects are silent about a key issue for reasons that are only semi-plausible.

I enjoyed the book, but not as much as I expected to.