Review: A Cast of Falcons

A Cast of Falcons by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Dr Nell Ward's best friend Persephone (Percy) is getting married in a hurry because the groom's mother is dying of cancer, Percy's parents are bitterly opposed to the wedding, so Nell generously offers to host the wedding at her family's estate, including having both families staying for a few days.

Nell is still dating DI James Clarke, but things are a bit strained because she still has feelings for her colleague Rav and everyone except Nell can see that he has feelings for her. FYI, Rav stormed off to India for six months when he discovered that Nell was actually Lady Helen, fabulously wealthy and a member of the aristocracy and he had no idea.

After a tense wedding, and an explosive wedding breakfast in which Percy's mother slapped the groom, everyone is just starting to wind down for the evening when the groom is seen falling from one of the balconies, did he slip or was he pushed?

This is very much along the lines of a classic golden age country house murder mystery, complete with bigoted Lords, jealous cousins, shady businessmen, and more secrets than you can shake a stick at. The plotting was good and held together well, in hindsight of course it had to be that person. It also answered the question I posed after the first book of how this could be a detective series when Nell's profession is such a niche one and the police would not need to call upon her expertise very often. However, there were a few irritations which brought down my rating.

First, the author has a very odd writing style, switching between first and third-person POV in the middle of a paragraph, one minute the narrator is telling the story and then it switches to Rav or Nell's inner musings without warning, It's the author's style, I noted it in the first book but every time it happened it threw me out of the story, and I had to reread the paragraph to understand it.

Second, Nell and Rav ran amok investigating things in the presence of several police officers, even if one of them was her boyfriend, eavesdropping on discussions, breaking into rooms, etc. All a bit implausible.

Third, the love-triangle was a mistake from the first book, very early on in this book I noted that the only way to resolve it would be for James to die or to turn out not to be the straight-up, honourable man he was portrayed to be, and I was pretty much proved right, so unnecessary.

It will be very interesting to see where this goes next.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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