Review: The Murder Museum

The Murder Museum by Alice Castle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second book in the series about Beth Haldane, a single mother living in affluent Dulwich Village, who solves mysteries with the help of Detective Inspector Harry York.

It has been several months since Beth found her boss murdered and her role at Wyatt's boy's school has expanded, not only because of her promotion, but also because she uncovered that the school's founder Thomas Wyatt financed the school with profits from the slave trade, now Beth is curating an exhibition from the school's archives uncovering the horrible history.

Wandering around Wyatt's Museum of Art Beth finds an unconscious young schoolgirl lying on a stone plinth, posed in a flimsy dress with her hands crossed theatrically over her chest. Barely alive, the girl is rushed to hospital, but no-one knows who she is, surely her parents would have reported her missing? Beth uncovers a dark side to the equally prestigious girl's school College School, there seems to be issues with anorexia, cutting, posing on social media and bad behaviour. Could this be a suicide attempt? An inadvertent overdose? But what about the posing of the body - surely that was done by someone else? And then another girl is hospitalised with the same symptoms. Is there a serial killer or a batch of bad drugs?

I felt that this book was a bit all over the place, there were two 'suspects' (for want of a better word) but the way in which the stories were played out made me feel that even the author hadn't decided who would be the killer until near the end and Beth didn't so much uncover the truth using detective work as catch them in the act. I've seen this dual story done before and better.

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