BLACK SHIP
by Carola Dunn
A sleuthing couple who move to a new home suspect their new neighbors of murder.
The Honorable Daisy Dalrymple and her Scotland Yard detective husband Alec Fletcher are about to take up residence in No. 6, Constable Circle even though the lawyer for Alec’s uncle’s estate seems unenthusiastic. But a chance to move their growing family into a large, albeit shabby, house is too good to pass up. As it turns out, the lawyer’s daughter is part of the Jessups, purveyors of fine wines and spirits and the charming family who live next door. When the Fletchers’ honeymoon acquaintance, hapless ex-FBI agent Lambert, now tracking down bootleggers for the Treasury Department, arrives on their doorstep with no money or papers, they take him in, little knowing the trouble he will cause. Nicely settled in their refurbished house, they bid farewell to domestic bliss when a man is found murdered in the gardens outside their home and Alec gets the case. The dead man proves to be an Italian-American enforcer whom Daisy had seen leaving the Jessups’ house. Daisy feels sure her new neighbors, who admit to shipping spirits to the United States, can’t be cold-blooded murderers and sets out to prove it despite Alec’s usual resistance to her meddling.
Ever-curious Daisy (The Bloody Tower, 2007, etc.) adds an interesting take on Prohibition to her modest mystery.