(Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, No. 17)

A society girl solves mysteries in the 1920s

“I did a lot of research on the bootlegging part of the story,” says Black Ship author Carola Dunn.

     “I found myself knowing vastly more about bootlegging than the vast majority of Americans, including my son, who teaches American history. Quite a lot of what I learnt was pretty funny, stories about the tricks the rumrunners used to escape the Coast Guard and the trials when they were caught but juries refused to convict.”

     Once you read a Daisy Dalrymple mystery you will want to read the rest. Black Ship is driven by witty dialog and historical details, like all the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries. This is the 17th book in the series and still going strong. Daisy’s husband Alec, a Scotland Yard detective, inherits a large house that they move into with their young twins and Alec’s daughter from his first marriage. When a body is found in the shared garden, was it murder or something else?

     “Black Ship started with an idea for a title: A Moving Target,” says Dunn. “However, when I started to work out the story to go with the title, it simply didn't jell.”

     “Once I'd thought of making the next-door neighbors high-class wine merchants, the rest was easy,” says Dunn. “I'd done some research on Prohibition for The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, so getting the neighbors mixed up in shipping booze to America was obvious.” The Murdered Muckraker is Dunn’s only book set in the US, and one of its characters turns up in Black Ship.

     As is common in book publishing, Dunn didn’t meet her editor in person until after they'd worked together for years. “Back in early 1993, Dunn’s agent submitted to me a proposal for a series of traditional mystery novels set in 1920s England, featuring a very modern, for the time, young woman,” says St Martin’s Press executive editor Keith Kahla.

     Black Ship is a good book to start you off if you’ve never read a Dalrymple mystery. The mystery is well plotted and doesn’t rely upon the earlier books. The dialog and action move the story along, while the everyday events of life help you to get to know the characters.

     Carola Dunn currently lives in  Oregon. She was born in London and went to school at Essex and the University of Manchester.  She has fifty published books, the next one of which will be Manna from Hades, a new Cornish mystery series that will debut in March.

Black Ship (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, No. 17) by Carola Dunn

Hardcover, 304 pages, Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur, (September 2, 2008)

Language: English, ISBN: 9780312363079 $24.95