Finally back to actual good-quality books from Bookbub! I tried to claim that perhaps my special discrimination for these free books only worked on mysteries, but Rebecca isn’t buying it. Anyway, this is another historical mystery, set in 1930, but what really makes it stand out is that the detective duo is a couple of maids at the titular Merisham Lodge. When the lady of the house dies in mysterious circumstances, they find that their very invisibility to the ‘upstairs’ members of the household make them ideal investigators. They work with a charming and patient investigator with a refreshing lack of romance. In addition to an intriguing plot that I couldn’t guess at all, the details of the below-stairs work and lives is fascinating.
While Murder at Merisham Lodge is considered Book 1 of the series, there is a previous novella, alluded to but not spoiled in the novel, in which the two maids come across their very first suspicious death. I immediately paid a whopping $0.99 for Death at the Manor, which was quite short and not as well fleshed out as the novel, but still very entertaining and well worth a dollar.
The novella then included an excerpt for Hushabye, the first in a series of modern-day murder mysteries by Grace, featuring newly transferred Detective Sergeant Kate Redman, who must familiarize herself with her new team while investigating the kidnapping of an infant and murder of a nanny. I discovered that it was free for Kindle, as well, so I downloaded it in full and read it in about a day. The novel lacks some of the originality of the historical series, but is still very, very good, also with a plot that kept me guessing and a wide variety of interesting characters.
On the other hand, this looked really promising – a female hard-boiled detective in the 40s – but fell real short of my expectations. The 1940s setting just felt like a gimmick, with obvious and clunky references to period-appropriate elements. Also, for some extremely peculiar reason the author also kept the ugly racial terms, which I don’t like in books actually written in the 40s and which I’m not going to tolerate in books written more recently. Less problematic, but still a peeve of mine, is when so-called tough ladies are written in ways where they just come across as bitchy. True tough ladies – and I’ve known a lot – are straight talkers that don’t take bullshit, but they are not needlessly rude or aggressive, and it is a lazy cop-out to write them that way.
