The corpse at the crystal palace A Daisy Dalrymple mystery

The twenty-third installment of the series featuring the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple, now the wife of Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, begins promisingly. Daisy has arranged a fun outing for family and friends to London's Crystal Palace, an exhibition hall surrounded by gardens and grounds. So it's a shock when Daisy discovers a nanny murdered in the ladies loo. At the same time, Nanny Gilpin, in charge of the Fletcher's children, has disappeared; Daisy quickly learns Nanny Gilpin has been injured chasing yet a third nanny! The concussion causes Nanny Gilpin to lose her memory, so the case will have to be solved by the sleuthing skills of Alec and his men and, to his familiar dismay, Daisy. After an invigorating start, the plots gets a bit convoluted, but the Russian émigrés and Cockney acrobats who inhabit the story keep things moving apace. There's also diversity here in the form of relatives from the West Indies and Daisy's Indian friend, Sakari, an interesting touch for a book set in 1928. Daisy is only 30, so expect more mysteries in this long-running and very popular series.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2018 Booklist

Set in 1928 London, Dunn's bright and breezy 23rd Daisy Dalrymple mystery (after 2015's Superfluous Women) provides an appealing glimpse of life among the well-to-do. When two teenage cousins arrive for a visit, Daisy takes the cousins, her three-year-old twins, and the twins' nurse, Nanny Gilpin, on an outing to the Crystal Palace. At one point, Nanny excuses herself. Daisy later goes looking for Nanny in the ladies' room, where she finds a dead woman she initially mistakes for Nanny in one of the stalls. Meanwhile, the twins run into the park, where they discover Nanny lying in a pond, half-drowned. The police are unable to identify the body, and Nanny suffers from memory loss. Are the murder and the attack on Nanny related? And who is responsible for these outrages, committed in such a public place? Daisy uses her connections among the "bright young things" and the more bohemian Chelsea set in an attempt to get the answers. Fans of Dorothy L. Sayers's gentleman sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, will find much to like. Agent: Alice Volpe, Northwest Literary Agency. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

An inveterate sleuth investigates a case of too many nannies.Now that her husband, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, is out of town on a case and his daughter, Belinda, is home from school, Daisy Fletcher is playing host to Ben and Charlie, her cousin's West Indian adoptees, whom she plans to show the sights of 1928 London. Their visit to the Crystal Palace includes Daisy's twins, who are cared for by Nanny Gilpin and nursery maid Bertha; Daisy's friend Sakari; and retired DS Tom Tring and his wife. Belinda and the boys are exploring on their own when they notice Nanny Gilpin following another nanny and decide to trail them. They catch up just in time to rescue Nanny Gilpin, whom they find floating in an ornamental lake. When Daisy goes searching for her missing nanny, she finds instead a dead nanny in a stall in the ladies' room. Luckily, Tom Tring is on hand to help with the police. Daisy's still wondering why the body looks familiar when the soaking wet children arrive to announce that Mrs. Gilpin needs help. Indeed she does: She has a head wound and no memory of what happened to her or why she was following the unknown nanny. The dead nanny turns out to be Teddy Devenish, a cousin of Daisy's friend Lucy, Lady Gerald Bincombe. Unfortunately for the police, the young man about town had a bad reputation, and plenty of people would be glad to see him dead. Although she knows that neither Alec nor the police will be pleased, Daisy, who's perfectly placed to mine information from her aristocratic friends, dives into the investigation and comes up with the clues that solve the case.Not the best in Dunn's long-running series (Superfluous Women, 2015, etc.), this one relies on period detail to charm fans of classic British mysteries. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.