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The Death Of Lucy Kyte (2014)

by Nicola Upson(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

006219545X (ISBN13: 9780062195456)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Bourbon Street Books

series

Josephine Tey

review 1: An interesting variation on a crime novel, with a real writer (Josephine Tey) fictionalised as an amateur sleuth in 1930s Britain. The story involves the partly-recovered & interpreted diaries of the eponymous Lucy Kyte from the rural Essex countryside of the 1820s...where the infamous 'Red Barn Murder' of Maria Marten in 1826 later concentrated febrile Victorian minds on the banality but inherent melodrama of violent crime (a taste fed by the burgeoning newspaper trade!); Nicola Upson skilfully stage-manages an enjoyable & informative novel with ghostly overtones & earthy motivations to a climactic finale involving several plot twists which left me breathless.Perhaps a trifle twee in parts with some anachronistic modern touches in her female protagonists & Upson is prone ... moreto purple prose in patches which can slow the pace to leisurely - but it holds its own with other 1930-40s-set crime novels...though far from the hyper-realism of some recent additions - more Agatha Christie's Miss Marple than Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.This is the 5th in the series & I am inclined to seek out Miss Tey's previous outings...if only to explain some of her close & closeted relationships with recurring characters.Ho hum.
review 2: Ghost story and mystery, this is the first book I have read in Upson's series based on Josephine Tey as a character. The mixture of two centuries, the theater, writing, Inverness in Scotland and Polstead in England, love affairs and independent women, and seasons over the year works well to give senses of place and time. This was not as quick a read as I might have liked but it held my interest and gave me a nightmare or two. less

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