Penny for Your Secrets by Anna Lee HuberMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Verity and Sidney attend a society dinner hosted by one of Verity's friends. The next day their host is dead, shot by the very pistol that Verity's friend Ada threatened him with at dinner. Ada begs Verity to help her by finding the true killer.
Separately, a former colleague asks Verity to investigate her half-sister's murder, allegedly by a cat-burglar. The half-sister worked in the Post Office during the war redacting sensitive information from letters and Verity's friend is worried that her death may have been related to her war work.
These seemingly unconnected murders soon turn out to be very much connected and as the body count mounts Verity and Sidney must use all their wits to uncover the murderer.
My concerns about Anna Lee Huber's use of English continue. My pet peeve in this book is the use of the word zozzled. At first I thought it was completely made-up in mistake for sozzled, but a little bit of googling uncovers that it was a word used in 1920s Prohibition America as an alternative to sozzled - in either way not used in 1919 England. Also various odd expressions like 'clicked it' or 'pickled as punch' which just pulled me out of the story.
Also, I was left with the overall impression that there was no evidence of the plot which they uncovered and it was all hung together by supposition and circumstance. (view spoiler)
I am happy to buy these when they are heavily discounted but I wouldn't pay full price.
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