About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DIG DEEP FOR MURDER
by Kate Kingsbury
Berkley Prime Crime, December 2002
199 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0425188868


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

For those of us who remember World War II, Kate Kingsbury's Manor House mysteries being back memories of paper drives, blackout curtains, and Victory Gardens. Lady Elizabeth Hartley-Compton is trying to uphold her image as "lady of the manor," despite her dreadful financial situation (her ex-husband gambled away the family fortune) and the stigma that her mother was but a parlor maid.

During the digging of a Victory Garden on her property, a body is unearthed. From its clothing the body is identified as Reggie Stewart, the local coal man. Since all of of Sitting Marsh's able bodied men are in the army, the police force now consists of two retired constables, both disgruntled about having been called out of retirement. Lady Elizabeth realizes that the police cannot be relied upon to conduct a thorough investigation, so she undertakes one herself. Since she is, after all, lady of the manor, she can get away with asking questions others wouldn't dare pose. Her first problem emerges when she tries to collect rent from a tenant, Fred Bickham. She finds his cottage deserted. A letter he left says that he is off to see his brother in Ireland, but Lady Elizabeth learns that Fred has no brother in Ireland, only a sister in Cornwall. This information becomes crucial to the mystery. At the same time that the funeral director gives Lady Elizabeth the crucial clue, the reader too realizes what has happened. In what has become a cliché in mysterydom, Lady Elizabeth confronts the murderer in a dark place by herself without having informed anyone where she's going.

Offering some amusing background are Lady Elizabeth's staff of four -- the senile butler Martin, who keeps referring to just having seen her father (who, with her mother, was killed in London by a bomb), her housekeeper, Violet, who has a waspish tongue and no compunctions about giving order to Lady Elizabeth, whom she has served since childhood. To add a further bit of mystery, the new parlor maid, Sadie, is frightened by the ghosts of children, ghosts whom Martin also claims to have seen. Lady Elizabeth's assistant, Polly, promoted from parlor maid is involved with one of the American officers billeted in the east wing of the Manor House. She has told him that she is twenty-one, when she is just barely sixteen. She has fantasies that he will marry her and take her to America and a house with a swimming pool. It remains to be seen if he will continue the relationship once she has slipped and revealed her true age.

Another of the American officers, Major Earl Monroe, is the object of Lady Elizabeth's unrequited passion. (He has a wife and children back in the states.) The prose turns very purple when she is daydreaming about him. It's a little difficult to believe that he is unaware (which he seems to be) about her feelings for him, especially since the entire village is gossiping about the two, and Lady Elizabeth makes every possible excuse to spend time with him.

DIG DEEP is a light and pleasant read, with nothing to tax your brain cells. The characters are well defined, each with a distinctive voice, and the plot is easy to follow, against the background of a village trying to keep life as normal as possible in the face of the war.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, October 2002

This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]