Frances Brody’s eleventh Kate Shackleton mystery is sure to delight readers of Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear.Two murders. A one-way ticket to trouble.And it’s up to Kate to derail the killer.London, 1929. In the darkness before dawn, a railway porter, unloading a special train from Yorkshire, discovers a man’s body, shot and placed in a sack. There are no means of identification to be found … body, shot and placed in a sack. There are no means of identification to be found and as Scotland Yard hits a dead end, they call on the inimitable Kate Shackleton, a local sleuth, confident her local knowledge and investigative skills will produce results. But it’s no easy task.
Suspicion of political intrigue and fears of unrest in the Yorkshire coalfields, impose secrecy on her already difficult task. The murder of a shopkeeper, around the same time, seems too much of a coincidence. The convicted felon was found with blood on his hands, but it’s too tidy and Kate becomes convinced the police have the wrong man.
By then it’s too late. Kate finds herself in a den of vipers. The real killer is still at large, and having tinkered with Kate’s car, nearly causes her to crash. Not only that, but Scotland Yard has turned their back on her. As Kate edges toward the shocking truth, she’s going to need all the strength and resourcefulness she can muster to uncover this sinister web of deceit.
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Enjoyable crime set in 1920’s
It’s 1929 and Kate Shackleton has been asked by Scotland Yard to investigate a strange case. A special train has arrived from Yorkshire, delivering a spacial cargo for the London market – forced rhubarb. Turns out there is more than rhubarb on the train. When the unloading begins, a body is discovered stuffed into a bag like a load of spuds. Not a thing on the man to identify him and Scotland Yard is stumped. They are also worried that this corpse, having originated in Yorkshire, may be connected with the current unrest revolving around the strikes in the coal fields. As Kate knows the area and has the experience as a private detective, Scotland Yard hands over the file they have on the case. It isn’t long before Kate is certain that they are holding back information that she needs. There is much more to this investigation and soon another murder occurs. The police are saying one thing but Kate is certain that the two cases are connected and, with the help of her partner, Sykes and her housekeeper, she goes undercover to sort it out. The list is long as there are as many as two hundred rhubarb growers who placed their produce on that train. Who is the one who ties them altogether? And what does she not know that she must figure out before she becomes the next victim?
This series continues to shine as historical mystery writing at its best. It’s always a great puzzle with solid characters driving the plot. Kate is a wonderful main character, always up to the challenges her chosen profession throws at her. I had never heard of the rhubarb train and I enjoyed learning about it. A well written mystery that imparts a history lesson is not to be missed.
In this eleventh book in the Kate Shackleton series, Scotland Yard calls in Kate to investigate an unidentified body is found on a special train from Yorkshire, but they thwart her efforts by demanding her silence on certain things. During her investigation, she learns of another murder—one that supposedly has no connection to the one she’s looking into—or does it? Kate doesn’t believe in coincidences. The local police believe they have the culprit for the second one, but Kate believes he is innocent and is determined. She goes to work with her crew of assistants (an ex-cop turned PI and her housekeeper) to uncover the truth.
The plot and setting for this story were intriguing, but there was too much story—especially the details of rhubarb growing and mining in the area. Yes, the history was interesting at times (I had no idea there was so much call for rhubarb!), but it dragged down the story. The solution was fairly obvious from the beginning, and the end was something of an let down. I will say I found the characters interesting and diverse, but I didn’t pick this up to read a history of rhubarb.
As for the writing, note that there are multiple points of view and though Kate’s is in first person, the rest are all in third person, something I found distracting at times. There was also a lot of head-hopping.
Overall opinion: it’s an interesting cozy somewhat in the style of the Australian TV show, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries – same era (1920s) and all that entails. I felt it was a little slow due to the historical facts, and the end was a little anticlimactic, but overall, it’s not a bad read. If you enjoy the other books in the series, you’ll like this one as well. It did intrigue me enough that I will probably look for others.
My thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane books for the advanced reader copy made available for my review.
greed, private-investigators, law-enforcement, murder-investigation, England, between-the-wars, historical-research
Kate is a private investigator with a motley crew of assistants and a father in area law enforcement. She is called to Scotland Yard for an assignment regarding a murdered man dumped into a train car but is hobbled by instructions of silence and basically blocked at every turn. She heads northward and arranges to stay with an old friend and becomes aware of a seemingly unconnected murder in the town. The reader also gets to learn about rhubarb growth and transport to market outside of the normal growing season, a bit about pit coal mining, and the orphanage system of the time. The book insisted that I read it all in one hot afternoon.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Crooked Lane Books via NetGalley. Thank you!