Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple brings her usual style and flair to this eighth installment, set in 1920s London, in Dunn's engagingly entertaining series (Murder on the Flying Scotsman; Styx and Bones; etc.). Titled but penniless, Daisy has forged a successful career as a freelance journalist. Her latest assignment, on the museums of London, sends her to that city's Natural History Museum, where she stumbles upon murder. The dead man, the extremely unpopular Dr. Pettigrew, Keeper of Mineralogy, had been heard violently arguing shortly before being found among pieces of a smashed dinosaur skeleton, his chest pierced by a shard of fossil bone. To complicate matters, Daisy learns that someone has replaced the entire museum gem collection with fakes. Murder and mayhem being right up her alley, Daisy determines to solve both mysteries as well as to research her article. Her long-suffering fianc, DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, oversees the case, which is filled with every type of suspect from rival museum curators to Rudolf Maximilian, the dispossessed grand duke of Transcarpathia. The tale takes off a little slowly, but once murder occurs, the pace picks up. The satisfying climax comes, fittingly enough, on a foggy London evening. Dunn's witty prose shines in this lighthearted whodunit. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This tidy historical, set in the 1920s, features the young, aristocratic Daisy Dalrymple (Murder on the Flying Scotsman) as writer/sleuth. This time, she investigates murder at the Museum of Natural History in London. A clever cozy. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A new adventure for gutsy features reporter Daisy Dalrymple, a daughter of the 1920s aristocracy (Styx and Stones, 1999, etc.), who's engaged to Scotland Yard's Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher--a fiancÉ her mother, the Dowager Lady Dalrymple, finds as objectionable as her profession. Assigned to write an article on London museums for an American magazine, Daisy visits the Natural History Museum--home to fossils, bones, minerals, and eventually murder. But not before Daisy meets Mineral Keeper Pettigrew and other curators--Septimus Mummery, head of Fossil Reptiles; Curator of Fossils Ruddlestone; dinosaur expert Steadman; anthropologist Finch Brown, from the British Museum; and a constant presence in the Natural History rooms--Grand Duke Rudolph Maximilian of Transcarpathia, ever gazing at the priceless ruby once owned by his grandfather. It's Daisy's ill-luck to be present when Dr. Pettigrew is found stabbed to death in the reptile gallery, evidently by a sharpened flint. A short time later the Duke's ruby is revealed as a fake, along with the entire collection of precious stones. Alec and his competent second-in-command Tom Tring work their way through a mass of suspects, motives, keys, caches, and opportunities, but it's Daisy, as usual, who paws through the exhibits to come up with the final answer. The museum seems to cast a pall over the proceedings this time out, with Daisy's role overexpanded but lacking its usual verve. Strictly for diehard Daisy fans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
