Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Charming and feisty Poppy Redfern stumbles into murder in this exciting new World War II historical mystery series from critically acclaimed USA Today bestselling author Tessa Arlen.
Summer 1942. The world has been at war for three long and desperate years. In the remote English village of Little Buffenden, Poppy Redfern’s family house and farmland has been requisitioned by the War Office as a new airfield for the American Air Force. As the village's Air Raid Warden, Poppy spends her nights patrolling the village as she tries to ease her neighbors’ fears about the “Friendly Invasion” and what it means to their quiet way of life.
When two young, popular women who were dating American servicemen are found strangled, Poppy quickly realizes that her little town has been divided by murder. The mistrust and suspicion of their new American partners in war threatens to tear Little Buffenden apart. Poppy decides to start her own investigation with the help of a charismatic American pilot and she soon unearths some chilling secrets and long-held grudges. Poppy will have no choice but to lay a trap for a killer so perilously close to home, she might very well become the next victim....
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poppy Redfern, the narrator of this unremarkable series launch from Arlen (the Lady Montfort books) set in WWII England, leaves London, where she has trained as an air raid warden, for the town where she grew up, Little Buffenden, to serve as its first air raid warden. Her return coincides with the arrival of American fighter pilots and a series of strangulation murders of attractive young women, starting with Doreen Newcombe. Newcombe was garroted with a pair of nylon stockings her American boyfriend had given her, making him the obvious suspect. Poppy, who isn't so sure of his guilt, begins to play detective. Meanwhile, Poppy develops an American love interest of her own, Lt. Griff O'Neal, "the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life." Like Charles Todd's shell-shocked WWI veteran, Ian Rutledge, Poppy converses, if at a lighthearted level, with someone who isn't real the feisty heroine of the mystery novel she's writing. Cozy readers will best appreciate this one. Fans of British home front mysteries will find nothing new.
