Review: Murder in the Evening

Murder in the Evening by Blythe Baker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been having a bit of a cosy mystery (how I loath that description and much prefer Golden Age mystery, although I gather the two have slightly different definitions) pash, so when I saw this book with its stylised cover as a Kindle freebie I one-clicked.

Miss Alice Beckingham has met her fair share of death. Her brother Edward was convicted of killing his sister's suitor and was then himself murdered in prison. Then Alice and her mother were at a house party at Druiminn Castle where their host was murdered.

In this story Alice is meeting with some female friends for dinner at a restaurant, friends she hasn't seen for several years. There seems to be some tension at the table, then one of the guests goes into convulsions and dies at the table. A cryptic note from the victim asking Alice to enlist the help of her cousin (who apparently did some amateur detecting of her own) leads Alice to suspect that the death may have been murder and she determines to investigate on her own. At first she enlists the help of the chauffeur George, but once he has located the jewel thief Sherborne Sharp for her George disappears from the story. Sherborne is that oddity, a penniless jewel thief who manages to mix with high society.

Sadly, I found this vaguely unsatisfactory. I couldn't tell you in which year (or decade) this book was supposed to be set, although based on the timing of the previous book I would say 1929 or 1930 but otherwise there was nothing to inform the reader that this was post WW1 or leading in to the depression and WW2, other than one reference to a cloche hat. I found the lack of butlers but the presence of numerous maids and a chauffeur surprising, also the idea that Alice's parents seemed only mildly interested in her comings and goings. It felt as though Alice's servants and parents were just plot devices to allow her to do whatever was necessary for the plot. This vagueness seems to be a feature of Blythe Baker's writing as according to her Goodreads profile she comes "from the South Central part of the country", which country is anyone's guess.

I would say that Alice is the sort of bumbling sleuth who relies upon George and then Sherborne to do actual investigating and fortuitous discovery of various letters and diaries to progress the story and to save her (repeatedly) from her own stupid actions.

Overall the detection relied upon a lot of coincidences, a loquacious maid, several explicit/ incriminating documents which Alice stumbles across and a frank confession from the killer.

I might read another of these books if it was also free but I don't think I would pay for what felt like a flimsy novella.

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