Murder is never far from this sexy couple . . . even during the holidays!Their honeymoon abruptly ended by the untimely death of Alcott Howard, Clive and Henrietta return to Highbury, where Clive discovers all is not as it should be. Increasingly convinced that his father’s death was not an accident, Clive launches his own investigation, despite his mother’s belief that he has become “mentally … “mentally disturbed” with grief. Henrietta eventually joins forces with Clive on their first real case, which becomes darker—and deadlier—than they imagined as they get closer to the truth behind Alcott’s troubled affairs.
Meanwhile, Henrietta’s sister, Elsie, begins, at Henrietta’s orchestration, to take classes at a women’s college—an attempt to evade her troubles and prevent any further romantic temptations. When she meets a bookish German custodian at the school, however, he challenges her to think for herself . . . even as she discovers some shocking secrets about his past life.
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Never finished it. The story never went anywhere after several chapters. I almost always finish the books I start, but each time I picked it up expecting it to finally be interesting, I was disappointed. Maybe it gets better, but I will never know.
Hard to follow all the characters in the beginning. Doesn’t make me want to keep reading.
AWFUL! I made it through about 2 chapters and dumped it!
The first I’ve read in this series, but it’s the fourth written. Doesn’t exactly stand on its own– it took me a couple chapters to get clear on who was who and how they were related to each other; events in earlier books were referenced, but you could get the picture of what had happened to the extent I wouldn’t go back to read the first three. This was really two stories. One was about Henrietta and her new husband, Clive, a former police detective taking over his father’s business in 1930’s Chicago after his father’s death. The death may have been an accident, a suicide, or a homicide. It isn’t clear, and Henrietta and Clive set out to prove the homicide after finding that the mob had been extorting money from him for many years. The other story, which is actually the more interesting, is Henrietta’s plain, shy sister deciding to go to college and figuring out where her heart lies.
I was enthralled initially, loving all of the illusions to Chicago history. I found the characters likeable and the plot engaging. Then I kept running into very long passages explaining thoughts and dreams of characters that I felt were superfluous that needed editing. I liked the book overall and might try another one to see how the characters progress.