Gone West

By: Carola Dunn

Narrated by: Lucy Rayner

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.

Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions.

But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects, and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events.

©2013 Carola Dunn (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Did the Butler do it !??

Great cozy mystery but it took quite a while to adjust to the strong English accents of the narrator.

loved

Really enjoy the adventures of Ms. Daisy. always a interesting and slightly complicated story. Love these historical mysteries. Fun

Lucy Rayner is perfect again

I always enjoy Carola Dunn’s books but they are at their best when Lucy Rayner narrates. She is absolutely one of the best narrators in the audiobook arena.

One of her best

This one had an unusual twist for an ending. I do find some of the reader’s feminine voices just a touch too strident in tone, other that I enjoy listening to her readings.

A bit claustrophobic, but otherwise a good, basic Dalrymple

Most all of the story — besides the opening and closing chapters, and a couple of brief forays into the town of Matlock — takes place in a remote farmhouse. A very large house with several wings, but dark, cold and not quite as cozy as one would want. Or maybe it’s the odd family therein that seems less than cozy. In any event, it’s a good mystery, but either the draft the narrator read from of the narrator herself had some minor issues that should have been corrected (and probably were in later print editions, if that’s where they originated. For example, “Uncle Lorna and Uncle Norman”? Tsk.