It’s 1929, and Ticky Maltravers is the toast of London high society, adored by everyone—or so it seems, until somebody poisons him over dinner. Now it turns out that numerous people with secrets to hide had every reason to wish him dead. But which of them murdered him? For Freddy Pilkington-Soames, newspaper reporter and man-about-town, the question hits a little too close to home, thanks to an … an unfortunate drunken encounter with Ticky’s corpse which he’d much rather the police didn’t find out about—and thanks also to his exasperating mother Cynthia’s seeming determination to get herself arrested by tampering with the evidence. But a pretty girl with big blue eyes is demanding his help in solving the mystery, so what can he do but agree? Now all he has to do is hide the wrong clues, find the right ones, and unmask the murderer before the police discover what’s really been going on. That ought to be easy enough. If only people didn’t keep getting killed…
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I like all of Clara Benson’s books. It reminds me some of Agatha Christie’s work. It has the feel of a cozy mystery. That’s where I am at my age, preferring cozy to ones depicting the evil in our world.
Mystery was good enough. This was my introduction to this series and I was not persuaded that the main character was strong enough — Clever, yes; but is he smart?
This is a solid who’s doing it story with a lot of twists and turns. The main character’s mother is maddeningly feather headed, but that creates much of the humor and exasperation of the novel. It’s a good read for those who want to relax with a mystery.
Not especially admirable characters, but intriguing. You need a cheat sheet to follow the cast but eventually I became familiar with them. A poor man’s Lord Peter Whimsey.
I enjoyed the story. The book is well written but a bit typical of this kind of historical mystery
Repeat repeat
Entertaining but not a favorite
I love books written in this time period. I hated that Ticky died so early.I would have loved to have seen more of his character. The story seemed to lose momentum near the end but I still enjoyed it.ied so early.
It was a fun read. It was a good break from the very painful Escape from Sobibor
Took a little bit to flesh out the characters and the plot but it was a very entertaining read that keep me turning the pages to find out what happens.
A nice old-fashioned mystery
But very slow moving. I did finish it, but I kept wanting things to be happening.
I really liked it. It was funny and I didn’t guess until almost the end who done it
I may go back to this book, but when the author has characters do things that are clearly illogical it puts me off. So I only got a few chapters into this when I stopped.
It was nice, kind of light-reading and a little comical. I do recommend it.
This was really rather silly..not as entertaining as I had expected.
Interesting. Kept my interest.
A light and amusing typical English mystery of bygone days. Just a fun read for a change.
Ms. Benson’s writing style reminds me of the Jeeves and Wooster series – light hearted, witty and quite clever. This book was just plain fun!
Really not worth the time it took to read it.