D is for Death

I had the time of my life reading D is for Death, the first crime novel by Harriet Evans. It is absolutely delicious, a mash up of so many of my favourite things, with a heroine who has gone straight to the top of my list of favourite sleuths.

This book is deep in chatty, affectionate conversation with classic crime novels, it is so good and funny and interested in small, important things like velvet lined tweed capes, peppermint creams and pearlescent blue tea cups. It is bristling with loveable characters (Dreda, straight out the pages of Georgette Heyer! Susan, Albert, Maria, a whole crew of loveable librarians! Miss Pym! I’m already hopelessly team Fox and his handsome forearms) It felt like there were potential stories everywhere, like there should already be a hundred more of these, and a long-running twelve season tv series that we all rewatch at the weekend.

I think it’s clear that I loved it, but here is a non-exhaustive list - if, like me, you enjoy these things I think this will be absolutely your cup of tea: Harriet Vane, Phryne Fisher, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Cold Comfort Farm, Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series, all the London shenanigans in I Capture the Castle, excellent clothes including a sequinned Schiaparelli jumpsuit, Enola Holmes, Nancy Mitford, giraffes, Veronica Speedwell, vintage green penguin paperbacks, and cinnamon toast from Betty’s.

What bliss!

A new heroine for the age, Dora Wildwood is on the run from a potentially disastrous marriage. Her mother is dead and her father too blinded with love of another bride to notice that Dora is in danger of being sucked into a stifling relationship.
Upping sticks Dora is headed to her Godmother’s but fate and circumstance intervene and a brief respite in a library result in her witnessing a murder. Her strong desire to right wrongs, make a living and also to escape the clutches of her persistent fiancé, Dora finds that she is embroiled in a mystery and involved with a mysterious librarian and a contrarian policeman. In between the ghastly murders and controlling would be groom we manage to get some lighter comedic moments that pitch his into more light hearted territory we come to expect from cosy crime.
Great fun to read and enjoy with its period setting and likeable heroine.

I absolutely loved "D is for Death" by Harriet F Townson. Set in the Golden Age, it is exactly how I think murder mystery books should be written. Endearing and inquisitive characters and a funny plot. Look forward to the next one.

A Most Satisfying Mystery..
It is 1935 and Dora is fleeing a proposed and most unsuitable marriage. With a husband to be on her tail she hides in London - unbeknown to Dora, she is just about to unwittingly discover her first dead body. Finding the body, in the library of all places, means that Dora is now ‘involved’. She can help with this investigation, can’t she? The start of a new historical mystery series with a delightful protagonist, a deftly drawn cast and a well imagined backdrop. The author has done a sterling job in creating a satisfying Golden Age feel with a true mystery at its very heart. A wonderful start to a new series.

Oh my god this book! I want to inhale it. I want to live in it. I want to buy the rest of the series and read them all one after the other while feasting on peppermint creams (a top tier reading snack, when I was a kid I often used to spend my pocket money on a new Sweet Valley High from WH Smith and some peppermint creams from Thornton's!) but sadly I have to wait for sequels to be written! They will be written, right? Right???

A glorious love letter to the Queens of Crime, with a sprinkle of Nancy Mitford and Dodie Smith, this book is just absolutely glorious fun. Dora is a joy, the crime is suitably twisty (although in deference to the rules of The Detection Club it's not so fiendish that there aren't Clues along the way), and the supporting characters are delightful. I just want more please, ASAP!

Thoroughly enjoyed this first book in the series - a heroine who sees things more clearly than others (while also being very eccentric and scatty), fabulous supporting characters (I hope we get Miss Pym back in future books), a twisty mystery, some Very Bad Behaviour from Dora's fiance (and of course the murderer and the red herring), and I think the London Library itself could count as a character. Wonderful period feel. If you're a fan of Dodie Smith and Golden Age Crime, you'll really enjoy this.

Okay, I love cosy crime, I love mid century fiction which means I really love Golden Age crime, I love any and all books set in libraries and I am a huge fan of Harriet Evans who has branched out into a new genre with D is for Death. All of which means I was very well disposed to this book before getting my grubby hands on it and expectations were HIGH. Luckily it did not disappoint. I adored it!

Dora arrives in London on the milk train, running away from an oppressive and unwanted engagement and to a life away from her sleepy (and full of surprisingly macabre traditions) village looking for her godmother, adventure and giraffes, not neccessarily in that order. She finds the first two straight away, met by her godmother's maid, but almost instantly losing her again when her fiance accosts her. Soon Dora is on the run, ending up by chance at The London Library having acquired by accident a small gun.

A couple of weeks later Dora has a job, friends and a place in a boarding house. Life would be perfect if only her ex fiance would get the hint and leave her alone and people connected to the library and her mother's glamorous novelist friend would just stop being murdered where Dora will find them. What is going on in London's literary world? Why is she slightly obsessed by the Detective Chief Inspector's forearms? What is the deal with mysterious librarian Ben? How can she help her old school friend, also trapped in an unwanted engagement but unlike Dora with no way out? And will she ever see a giraffe?

Clever, funny, poignant and full of gorgeous period detail, D is for Death is no museum piece but looks under the glamarous facade of inter war London at what life is like for those who don't fit in, for women still struggling for any kind of equality, for the poor and helpless. Witty, beautifully plotted and full of memorable characters I for one can't wait to see what Dora does next. Highly recommended.

An unexpected gem of a book!! Loved it!!
Set in 1935 it took me a while to get into the language, then I was hooked into a fascinating world of eccentricity, London in the 1930’s, and a woman’s lot in that life.
Dora Wildwood escapes her fate of marriage from an unsuitable match, on a dawn train from Somerset to London. Meeting up with some of her mother’s old friends she finds herself in a world of libraries, crime writers and trying to solve a murder mystery after finding herself in the middle of a crime scene. Dora is intuitive and sees more than people realise.
Loved the atmospheric descriptions of a smog filled London, great characters, and wonderful locations. The details of the fashions and ways of life was fascinating.
Really looking forward to Dora’s next adventure!!
Thank you NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the early read, hugely enjoyed and appreciated!

I enjoyed this story very much. All the characters were very likeable, especially our heroine, and the mystery slowly built without becoming tiresome. The story is set around the time just before the 2nd world war, but there is minimal mention of events or technology, so that it’s easy to forget it’s not set in another time period. I’m hoping this book will be the first in a series as there were unanswered questions at the end of the book surrounding our heroine

Thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful murder mystery!

Dora Wildwood is not your average detective, always feels out of place, says the wrong thing, notices too much, but that is her greatest strength !

An ode to books full of twists and turns, a clever whodunnit set in 1935, with murdered librarians, persistent ex fiancés, impossible love, new friendships and unexpected discoveries! I’m really hoping to read more of Miss Wildwood’s adventures in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for this ARC.

This is the first book in a new historical crime series by Harriet Evans writing as Harriet F. Townson, and it's a corker.

The story is set in 1935. 21 year-old upper-class Dora Wildwood with a love for peppermint creams, giraffes and independence has just escaped her dreadful boor of a fiance to London, where the first thing she does is fall over a dead body in the London Library. She fancies herself as a bit of a detective so decides to help out DI Fox and his extremely nice forearms, whether he wants it or not.

This is one heck of a book - charming but with dark undertones of misogyny, plus the spectre of war already looming. It starts slow, introducing the characters who all have to do with the book world, whether they are authors, publishers or librarians. There are a lot of quotes from world literature and the book feels like a declaration of love to books, especially crime novels.

At first I wasn't really interested much in who killed the Chief Librarian as he seemed an awful guy, but I loved soaking up the atmosphere and period detail of 1930s London, the old-fashioned language, the clothes, the music and the ambition of young girls who traditionally shouldn't want for much more than being a wife and mother. Dora is lucky that she could just get on a train to London but we see the stories of other young women who haven't got that choice. I have to say hurray for Miss Pym here! It was so descriptive and well-written, I really felt like I was there.

Then the pace really picks up with some clever twists, more murders occur and previous one are linked and it's becoming clear who all this centres around. I love that Dora gets given the opportunity to get everyone together in the library for the final reveal. I love everything about that spirited and unconventional young woman: that she is awfully clever but also kind, runs rings around the Inspector ("it's Detective Inspector!"), wears jumpsuits and sends her fiance packing while falling in love with a man she then gives up for the noblest of reasons.

I say, jolly good, old girl! I should not want to wait long for the next case, which has been set up nicely at the end.

"Books keep you company when there is no one else."