Poppy looked up, her face pale, her hands shaking. What is it, Poppy? Oh my, Rollo, oh my. I think we’ve just struck gold. Poppy Denby is furious with Rollo, who has gambled away his position at the Daily Globe and is being banished to New York. That is, until she discovers he plans to take her with him to work at the New York Times! Poppy can’t wait to report on the Manhattan arts scene, but her … her hopes are crushed when she is allocated The Death Beat – writing obituaries. But Poppy has a nose for a story, and when a body is found in a luxury penthouse apartment she starts to investigate. She unravels a sordid trail of illegal immigrants, forced labour, sex scandals, and an unexpected ghost from her past. Poppy is determined to help the victims, but can she find the evidence to bring the perpetrators to justice without putting her own life in danger…
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The past is about to come back and haunt Poppy!
Well, of the three Poppy Denby Investigates books that I’ve read I’m pretty sure that The Death Beat is my favorite. It had all of the Roaring Twenties drama and atmosphere, not to mention all of the vices, that any Jazz Age fan could wish for. In short, it’s the bees knees. The cat’s meow.
I think my favorite thing about this book is the way Fiona Veitch Smith wove threads of fun, and even humor, within the mystery and also the more serious topics. And she does take on some serious stuff like the exploitation of immigrants and sex trafficking. Things that plague our society even today. I’ve gotta say, though, that if more reporters cared about people, like Poppy does, instead of skirting the truth to help themselves up the career ladder, the world would be a better place.
Anyway, The Death Beat was fun and entertaining to read and I finished it surprisingly quickly. I really enjoyed the switch of a British author’s take on New York instead of the usual vice versa. As an American reader I thought Fiona Veitch Smith did a great job with it. Poppy’s astonishment, and sometimes confusion, was rather adorable.
As you can tell I liked this Poppy Denby Investigates book and I can’t wait to find out what happens next with the sometimes crazy newshawks at the Daily Globe. So, don’t you be a Rube or a Dumb Dora and miss out on all of the Jazz Age hijinks!
(I received a copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are entirely my own.)
This is the third in the Poppy Denby mystery series, but it reads perfectly even on its own, since the author takes a great care in filling in the readers with every information necessary from the previous books. In fact, the first half of the book sounds more as an evolution of the overarching story than a story in itself. But then, the characters are nice and the setting is good. Poppy is a spunky main character, a woman doing a man’s job in a men’s world: a journalist. And while her normal column might not be all that exciting, she has an instinct for sensational news and often finds herself in difficult situations. She’s already uncovered a couple of murders, as she will again in this adventure.
There are many threads in this story and only after the midpoint you can see they all converge on one mystery. Some of them, though, end in lose threads, so in a way I got the impression they where there just to beef up the mystery but weren’t really necessary. It is always a shame when this happens because I feel kind of cheated. But the mystery in itself – although maybe a little too convoluted – is indeed interesting. The story is set in the late 1920s, but the author explores an issue that is very relevant to us today: immigration and the way immigrants are treated.
There an overabundance of diversity in the book. Not that I have anything against it – on the contrary – but between the Jewish characters, Poppy’s boss who’s a dwarf, Poppy’s aunt who’s a lesbian on a wheelchair, eugenetics, suffragettes, amputated people and a few other ideas thrown in, I found the ensemble a little too much to be realistic. But aside from this, I found all the characters very interesting and relatable, so I won’t complain too much.
It’s a good story, fun and easy to read.