Murder is in the Air
A Kate Shackleton Mystery
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4.4 • 52 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Frances Brody's twelfth Kate Shackleton mystery will positively intoxicate fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Nicola Upson.
A competition for the crown proves deadly when confidences are betrayed and secrets are spilled.
North Yorkshire, 1930. It's the season for warm and spirited countryside celebrations. Ever since the war, pubs have been in the doldrums, and in an attempt to promote and breathe new life back into the business, brewers select a charismatic employee as local queen--to be the face of their industry. And this year's queen, wages clerk Ruth Parnaby, has invited the ever intrepid Kate Shackleton and her niece Harriet to accompany her on public engagements at a garden party thrown in her honor. But when Ruth leads children to the stables for pony rides, the drayman is missing, later found in the last place imaginable--the fermentation room, deceased.
What looked to be a simple case of asphyxiation in the dangerous fermentation room is quickly clarified by the pathologist as murder--the drayman was already dead before he was taken into the room. Someone was looking to cover it up. The horse dealer who sold the pony to the drayman comes under suspicion, but more and more Ruth's nasty father, Slater Parnaby's strong motive to dissuade his daughter from any festivities lingers in Kate's mind, despite his having an alibi. The case is muddy, at best, and it's going to take Kate at her keenest to decipher the truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1930, Brody's plodding 12th Kate Shackleton mystery (after 2019's The Body on the Train) takes private investigator Kate and her assistant, Jim Sykes, to the Yorkshire market town of Masham, where William Lofthouse, the owner of Barleycorn Brewery, needs her help. "You've a right good reputation for discretion, for tackling all sorts of tricky business," he tells her, and explains that there's "a bit of a muddle in the accounts." The capable Miss Crawford, William's secretary, gives Sykes the relevant documents to examine. When Miss Crawford is knocked off her bike by an automobile and killed instantly, Sykes is sure it was murder. Not much happens until a second death. Meanwhile, Ruth Parnaby, the company's wage clerk, is preparing to compete for the title of Brewery Queen of all Yorkshire. Ruth's travails and triumphs tend to overshadow the investigative work. Smooth prose and nice local color offset in part a less than scintillating plot. Series fans will best appreciate this installment.
