busyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is set in the time of Jane Austen (and marketed to that crowd. Honestly, I like historical mysteries, the Regency time period a little less. I find nothing romantic about it). Dido Kent is well on her way to spinster hood and somehow, last book (I’m assuming this is book two) she discovered a penchant for mysteries. She’s undertaking this one to put her cousin, Flora’s mind at ease.
Not unexpectedly, Dido is from a wee bit of wealth (what woman who didn’t would have time fro mystery solving in those days, after all?) Her cousin married even better and in their summer home Flora has become acquainted Mr. Lansdale whose aunt has just died over an overdose of her opiod based medicine. Flora is positive he could never have killed his aunt and is afraid that Mrs. Midgely will convince the pharmacist to go to the police and accuse him.
Dido is happy for the distraction and she starts working on how Mrs. Lansdale could have gotten so much medicine in her system and what Midgely has against Mr. Lansdale and all is going on under the surface at this town.
Dido is a likeable character. I was a little less fond of her habit of mulling things over in the form of letters to her sister. The mystery got to be a little over long but not by much. I do like that she did do almost everything on her own but she did have to call on Mr. Lomax, a man she is very fond of. I believe he is a lawyer (and I suspect he had a larger role in book one) and no matter what we might like to think, there were some things a woman couldn’t do in the early 1800s. Lomax served that role and of course the role of worried would-be-lover. I would certainly look for the first book and consider whatever comes next.
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