Gone West
A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
A novelist has gone murdered and Daisy Dalrymple investigates— in a series that's "pleasantly reminiscent of the old-fashioned English mysteries of a bygone era." —The Denver Post on Gunpowder Plot
In September 1926, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.
Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions.
But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dunn's charming 20th Daisy Dalrymple mystery (after 2011's Anthem for Doomed Youth) takes Daisy, in the fall of 1926, to a remote Derbyshire farm, where an old school friend, Sybil Sutherby, is concerned about the health of her employer, author Humphrey Birtwhistle, who pens westerns under a pseudonym. Due to Humphrey's prolonged illness, Sybil, as his secretary editor, has taken over the actual writing of his work. When Humphrey "goes west" (a British idiom, an authorial note informs us, to indicate a person has died or disappeared), Doctor Knox, a close family friend, refuses to sign the death certificate because he can't cite a cause. Daisy's husband, Chief Det. Insp. Alec Fletcher, comes from London to join the local police in the subsequent investigation. Daisy must tread carefully between her own theories and the official line in a cozy replete with the amenities of English country life.
