Black Ship-Carola Dunn

Black Ship
Carola Dunn
St. Martin's, Aug 2008, $24.95
ISBN 9780312363079

In 1925 with the death of his great uncle, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher inherits a fixer upper home on the outer rim of London. He and his wife Daisy Dalrymple are excited by the size of the large house as they feared space for their growing family; although neither is pleased with their neighbors. Still with their babies, who Daisy enjoys spending time with, the house came to them at the right time; not that either wanted up in the relative to die.

Soon after moving into the Hampstead Heath house, their maid finds a corpse in the garden. Alec begins officially investigating while Daisy sleuths too starting with who he is. Soon the married couple find the case focuses on bootlegging of rum on black ships in which American mobsters are muscling their way into a piece of the action.

Fans of this strong historical mystery series will appreciate the latest entry as the English gentry and servant class perspective to the American inanity called Prohibition makes for a roaring twenties tale. The whodunit is fun, but as with the entire Honorable Daisy Dalrymple saga it is the sense of time and place that brings enthralled readers to a bygone era.

Harriet Klausner