Kitty Underhay's mother disappeared when she was five; her father was gone even before then. She grew up with her grandmother at the Dolphin Hotel. During the summer of 1933, Kitty's great-aunt is ill so her grandmother travels to be with her leaving Kitty and the regular staff to run the hotel. Also present will be the new security officer, Matthew Bryant. He was a captain in the military and trained to help protect.
Why a new security officer? Kitty doesn't know this but her grandmother has been receiving threatening letters. They imply that there is something valuable at the hotel and the sender wants it back. And there's a mysterious death. Then another. It's up to Kitty to figure out what's going on.
I liked the character development and forgave a little bit of shallowness for this being a first book but I also felt like the story was well built out. There were people thrown in at the end that weren't even well-disguised red herrings. Connections between characters magically appeared. And while the book started off strong, there was some time in the middle that I had to force myself to pick up the book to keep going. I hope that some of these things (story, character building, pacing) will be worked out in the next book in the series.
Three stars
Followed by
Murder at Enderly Hall
This book came out December 11th
ARC kindly provided by Bookouture and NetGalley
Opinions are my own
Doughty hits it out of the park with another readable book that looks at death and makes it understandable. This particular book answers all of your burning questions including the one from the title as well as what happens to bodies in space and whether people can be too tall for caskets.
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