Barbara’s rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Series: Deadly #2
Publication Date: 4/25/17
Period: 1936 Inter-War London
Audiobook Narrator: Henrietta Meire for Tantor Audio

As a fan of this author’s Victorian Bookshop Mystery series, I wanted to try her Deadly series as well. I’m so glad I did as I enjoyed the time I spent with Olivia as well as her obnoxious wealthy cousins, her budding significant other – Adam, her employer at the newspaper, her photographer Jane, and, of course, her overbearing, disapproving father. My library didn’t have the first book in the series available, so I started with this one and it was no trouble at all to step right into the series and feel at home. I’ll definitely read the first book whenever my library has it available.

I ‘read’ the audiobook version and the narrator did an overall nice job. The pacing was nicely done, but, for me, the voice was too high-pitched and whiny when doing ‘posh’ aristocratic voices.

Widowed Olivia Dennis didn’t want to move back to her father’s house after her husband, Reggie, was murdered, so she got a job at The Daily Premier as a society reporter. Her father was incensed at the idea of his daughter actually working. Luckily, he doesn’t know she’s also done some more clandestine reporting for her boss. He does know, however, that she is the one who solved her husband’s murder, and that is a bone of contention between them as well.

Olivia has a love/hate relationship with her distant aristocratic cousins and she can’t believe she’s let Celia talk her into arriving early and helping Celia prepare for her wedding. With a rude, curmudgeonly patriarch, his equally rude adult children, and their adult children all living in the same household, there is little enjoyment in their company.

The old patriarch is found murdered on Celia’s wedding day, but the discovery is hushed up until the wedding is done. Since it is Celia and her groom’s third try for a wedding, her mother wanted to make sure it happened this time! When Celia announces she doesn’t trust the police to find the correct murderer and tasks Olivia with investigating the crime, things get pretty tense. Nobody wants Olivia sticking her nose in their business – but – none of them are convinced the police will get it right either.

At the same time, she is investigating the family murder, her boss assigns her a clandestine mission for him. That mission is truly dangerous since she must travel to an Austria that has just been annexed by Germany. Nazi’s have taken over and the drums of war can be heard in the distance. Can Olivia and Jane safely complete their mission and make it safely out of Austria? Oh! My!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to continuing with the series.

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