Superfluous Women
A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
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 Chief 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 Underwood, 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The shadow of WWI hangs over Dunn's affecting 22nd mystery set in 1920s England (after 2013's Heirs of the Body). To escape the London smog, journalist Daisy Dalrymple and her husband, Scotland Yard's Det. Insp. Alec Fletcher, have come to the Thames Valley town of Beaconsfield, where a school friend Daisy hasn't seen in years, Wilhelmina "Willie" Chandler, has bought a house with two other unmarried women. When Daisy and Alec go to a luncheon given by Willie and her housemates, Isabel Sutcliffe and Vera Leighton, the couple find their hostesses without a key to the wine cellar. Alec offers to pick the lock and upon entry into the cellar makes the gruesome discovery of a dead body. With Willie, Isabel, and Vera as murder suspects, Daisy sets out on her own to unearth the truth. Dunn sensitively portrays a largely female society devastated by the war that cost the lives of more than 700,000 British men.
