Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder by Catriona McPhersonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Our intrepid heroine and private investigator Dandy Gilver is summoned to Dunfermline to investigate the disappearance of Mirren Atkins, granddaughter of Dandy's client who owns Atkins Emporium store. But what she walks into is a multi-generational hotbed of lies and secrets with Mirren and her beau, Dugald Hepburn, grandson of the founder of House of Hepburn, hate rivals of Atkins Emporium. a real Romeo and Juliet romance, which sadly is fated to end just as badly.
I struggled to get into this book, heck I started it two months ago and only read about two and a half chapters before putting it down, the cloying relationships, especially since there appeared to be three Mrs Atkins and one Miss Atkins to keep straight, all variously called by their own names or by their husband's names.
Anyway, I picked it up again last night and got gripped by the death of poor Mirren on the day of Atkin Emporium's Anniversary when the great and the good had come to the store to celebrate. The only reason I gave this three and a half stars rather than four was because I had read something very similar to this plot (being deliberately vague) many years ago. It was either one of those family sagas that were so popular back in the 1970s like Catherine Cookson or Susan Howatch, or I recall one about several generations in New Orleans where one of the lovers drowned when the levee burst (I am going to have find out what that book was now). Anyway, that was a longwinded way of saying I suspected quite early what was going on.
However, Hugh! OMG. Melted.
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