Mondays mean it is time
for “Monday With Kaye” and this week Kaye George reviews Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of
Bloodstains. Apparently my preferred treatment of burning them out with a
flamethrower is not appropriate. Who knew?
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of
Bloodstains by Catriona McPherson
This mystery is amusing in a reserved, Scottish way. It's the
fifth in the Dandy Gilver series,
published in this country in 2012, but 2009 in Great Britain.
Dandy, an aristocrat from
a bygone age, 1926 according to the back cover text, is actually named
Dandelion Dahlia Gilver. Her family inhabits Gilverton, but that place isn't
seen in this novel. Instead, she spends her time at another aristocratic
mansion, as a lady's maid. She takes an undercover assignment for the mistress
of the house, Walburga Balfour, called Lollie. Lollie needs to stop her husband
from killing her, as she tells Dandy he's been threatening to do. Lollie is
doubting her sanity and needs confirmation, and her life saved.
She tells how her husband, Pip, has been whispering into her ear
snatches of a gruesome Robert Browning poem about strangling his mistress.
Dandy must embark on this adventure without her good friend, Alec, as she
immerses herself in the workings of a place with the incredible number of
twelve servants. When Pip himself turns up dead, most of the servants are
suspects, along with Lollie and some others.
A flavor of the times is helped along with the character of
Harry, the valet and the resident “Red.” Other eddies and whirlpools of
relationships lurk under the surface below stairs. But there are upstairs
suspects as well, and Dandy faces the potentially fatal problem of maintaining
her disguise in front of the servants, any of whom may have murdered their
master.
Reviewed by Kaye George, author
of Choke
for Suspense Magazine
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