A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany – A Review

Gemma Doyle owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop in West London, Massachusetts, is once again at the centre of a murder investigation when she finds a body in Mrs Hudson’s Tea Rooms next door. Incredibly, this is the third murder in a small holiday town during the same tourist season, yet none of the many tourists seems remotely perturbed. There is no panic and no reports of cancellations and none of the business owners seem worried about the future of their businesses.

This time the victim is a local, the chair of the board of a local museum which has recently been damaged by a fire, fortunately discovered in time to prevent further damage by Gemma. Mrs Hudson’s, co-owned by Gemma and her friend Jayne Wilson, is hosting an auction to raise funds for repairs and it is as the auction is due to start that Gemma finds the body. This is the third murder victim either discovered by Gemma after the fact or killed in her presence in a matter of weeks. Surely the town would be a safer place if she weren’t there.

Instead of being locked up by the police, Gemma is asked to investigate by the ghastly woman who owns the shop opposite when it becomes clear that everyone suspects her and not Gemma of being the murderer. Gemma is helped and hindered by her friends, and her relationship with the local police is less abrasive in this novel than it has been in previous novels. This is just as well, because it seems to me that there are lots of reasons why she should be locked up and out of the way of the investigation.

As you can probably tell, I found that it was impossible to care very much about whodunit and why. The victim and the majority of the suspects are really unlikeable. The woman across the road is so unpleasant that I’m reasonably sure that most people would just assume that she was the murderer and leave her to her fate. She does, however, provide Gemma with a (very thin) pretext to investigate, which she does simply because she wants to.

When the murderer is revealed, it’s a bit of an anti-climax,  and the murderer’s motives are really weak. Of the three novels in this series that I’ve read, this is the least successful.

Fortunately the local library only had these three, so I won’t be reading any other books in the series. I also won’t be taking a holiday in a small seaside town in Massachusetts at any time in the future.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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