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AN UNMENTIONABLE MURDER
by Kate Kingsbury
Berkley, August 2006
224 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425211142


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Lady Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton is a woman with many problems. Always at the fore is her passionate -- though platonic -- love for the American pilot, Major Earl Monroe, who is flying over France and Germany and has to be out of touch as the troops prepare for the D-Day invasion in Normandy on June 6 1944. However, foremost at the moment is the disappearance of her slightly delusional octogenarian butler, Martin.

Lady Elizabeth calls in all the resources of Sitting Marsh for the search. Martin turns up, unwilling to tell Lady Elizabeth where he's been. Overshadowing all is the shooting death of the local rag and bone man, Clyde Morgan, one of the village's meanest drunks. Though the police rule the death a suicide, some clues lead Lady Elizabeth to believe the death was murder. Last -- and surely least -- is the removal of women's knickers (underwear/unmentionables) from the washing lineÊ

In addition to Lady Elizabeth there are two sets of sleuths: Polly, Lady Elizabeth's assistant, and Sadie, her maid, both determined to solve the mystery of the missing knickers. Thanks to their persistence -- and Sadie's sense of adventure -- they recover the knickers.

The other pair are Marge and Clara, members of the Housewives League, a group founded by the ferocious Rita Crumm to search for Nazis in the area. Their search leads them to a windmill, where hearing a sneeze convinces them that they have unearthed the invaders.

Kingsbury is skilled at giving the reader a group of obvious suspects. The local butcher's daughter was irrevocably brain damaged by Morgan, who when drunk and playing darts hit her with a dart which went through her head into the brain, leaving her a vegetable for life.

Then there is Morgan's own family, all of whom he has abused. The bumbling constable George, called out of retirement when the able-bodied men of Sitting Marsh went to war, is of no help in Lady Elizabeth's investigation. Missing is Rita Crumm, who could always be counted on for a laugh as she tyrannized the women of Sitting Marsh.

The plot moves along with a good sense of the privations caused by the war in a small village. The ending suggests that, while the war is not yet over, the series is.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, August 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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