The Winter Garden Mystery 
Daisy Dalrymple Mystery, No 2 
By Carola Dunn

     The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple is back for a second assignment, ostensibly writing an article about picturesque Occles Hall, but ending up doing more than her share of sleuthing. Photographing the Winter Gardens yields the discovery of a body and the local Plods are keen to arrest the first person that looks a likely suspect. Convinced of their innocence, Daisy enlists the help of handsome Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher and the pair of them has a considerable array of suspects to interview before one of them ends up in the flowerbed themselves.

    This is the second enjoyable cozy about house party murders during the Roaring Twenties and it looks as though this series is going to get better and better. Death at Wentwater Court (also reviewed on this site) set the scene, but this novel boasts a better plot, more suspects, and plenty going on apart from the murder. Beneath the coziness is a sound underpinning of historical knowledge, and once again this book’s main strength (enjoyable story notwithstanding) is its depiction of a country in a state of flux following the Great War. This is a perceptive portrayal of post-war England where the bright, brittle surface covers real tragedy, and no amount of “cozy” sleuthing can detract from this. I will be reading book three, and if you like this type of thing so will you. Entertaining and convincingly done.

Reviews of other titles in this series

Death at Wentwater Court, 1
The Winter Garden Mystery, 2
Requiem For A Mezzo, 3
Murder on the Flying Scotsman, 4
Damsel in Distress, 5
Dead In The Water, 6
Styx and Stones, 7
Rattle His Bones, 8 [review 1] [review 2]
To Davy Jones Below, 9
The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, 10
Mistletoe and Murder, 11
Die Laughing, 12
A Mourning Wedding, 13
Fall of a Philanderer, 14
Gunpowder Plot, 15
The Black Ship, 17
Sheer Folly, 18
Anthem For Doomed Youth, 19
Gone West, 20