Two books out today

The latest (18th)  Daisy Dalrymple mystery, out today from St Martin’s Minotaur. Available from all booksellers.

Daisy and her friend Lucy going in search of the best grotto in England for their book on follies (the architectural kind). To Lucy’s dismay, the grotto belongs to a manufacturer of plumbing fixtures, who bought the associated mansion from the ancient but impoverished family who once owned it. Lucy and Daisy are not the only unlikely guests: also visiting are their penniless schoolfriend, Julia, and her widowed mother; a high-up civil servant with his socialite wife; an earl who’s in love with Julia but having an affaire with the civil servant’s wife; and a mysterious Canadian. Together with the “plumber”s sister-in-law and her son, they make up a strained house-party where something is bound to explode–and does,  taking one of the guests with it. Daisy’s husband DCI Alec Fletcher and Lucy’s husband Gerald arrive just in time to see the grotto blow up…

View some real English grottos at http://www.follytowers.com/stourheadtrail5.html and http://www.follytowers.com/stowetrail34.html

Also out today, BLACK SHIP in paperback at last, the 17th Daisy mystery.

Daisy and  Alec and family move to Hampstead. When their dog finds a body in the communal garden, they soon find themselves involved with American rumrunners, bootleggers, and gangsters, not to mention a hapless US Revenue agent.…

You can read some extraordinary (and very funny) stories about the trials of rumrunners here: http://blog.thejurorinvestigates.com/2008/09/03/rumrunners-on-trial.aspx

Tags: 1920s, BOOTLEGGERS, Carola Dunn, Daisy Dalrymple, grotto, RUMRUNNERS