Reviewer: Mary Lignor
Title: The Hangman's Row Enquiry - 1st in the Ivy Beasley Mystery series
Author: Ann Purser
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
ISBN-13: 978-0-425-23473-0
Release Date: May 2010
Genre/Sub-genre: Cozy Mystery
Year/Setting: Present day, Barrington, England, County of Suffolk
Overall Rating: 4.5
Sexual Content Rating: Subtle
Language (Profanity/Slang) Content Rating: None
Violent Content Rating: Moderate
Ann's Website: www.annpurser.com
Hi Readers,
This is a very classy and clever English Cozy mystery. A wonderful setting and very real character.
The main character, Ivy Beasley, is an elderly woman who has been moved, at the suggestion of her cousin Dierdre, to an assisted living retirement home in Barrington, England. Barrington is a lovely village of houses that were initially built as an estate village and had belonged to the squire and all the folks who lived in the cottages worked at the Hall. Unfortunately, money had run out and the present Squire, Theodore Roussel sold off most of the real estate but retained the Hall itself for his own family to live in.
Part of the village was called Hangman's Row, a small area of three houses that the Squire still owned outright. One cottage occupied by the farm worker and his wife and child, the others by a widow and her spinster daughter and the new tenant a gentleman with a questionable past. Getting to the mystery: the elderly widow has been stabbed in the heart and her daughter is the main suspect. Ivy Beasley, her cousin Dierdre, who has more money than she knows what to do with, along with Gus, the newcomer, who loves to be in the middle of any puzzle without revealing his past to anyone, decide to form their own investigation of the case and start their own detective agency called: "Enquire Within" and begin their inquiries. The gossip in the village is that the widow and her daughter were at odds all the time but, Ivy, Gus and Dierdre soon find out that there were any number of people in the village that had it in for the widow.
This is a wonderful book for a dreary afternoon. You will get lost, as I did, in the story and won't even know what's going on around you. I never really cared for British mysteries, but this one does not follow the ones that I've read. It's very clever and the characters are a lot of fun. Also, a very good ending and it's British to the core.
Have a good read and I'll talk to you soon,
Mary
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