A Baffling Murder at the Midsummer Ball is the second book in the Dizzy Heights historical mystery series by T.E. Kinsey. Released 27th July 2021 by Amazon on their Thomas & Mercer imprint, it's 318 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book (and the first in the series) are currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.
This is such an exuberant jazz-fueled musical romp and combines a lot of my favorite elements of classic crime novels from the British Golden Age. It's a closed room murder mystery, set in a country house in the 1920s interwar period, and the action plays out in isolation (golden age trifecta, right there), since the country home where the murder has taken place is also isolated for the moment by a huge flood which also knocks out the telephone lines and roads.
The characters are unusually well rendered and it was easy to keep them distinct in my mind whilst reading. The plotting is spare and subtly twisty with lots of undercurrents and red herrings to keep readers engaged. The resolution and denouement were written with finesse and facility and I found it a satisfying read. I was unaware that the author had written another series besides the lightly humorous Lady Hardcastle books and I enjoyed this series very much.
Although this is the second book in this series, I read it as a standalone and it worked very well. I intend to go back and read the first book as well. I was especially impressed by the characterizations. The author manages to keep more than a dozen characters quite distinct and I had no problems at all remembering who was who which is often a problem for me. If there are more than a few suspects, they sometimes tend to blend together.
This one reminded me in a lot of good ways of the best of the golden age authors, especially Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, or even John Bude or Edmund Crispin's slight shadings of campy lighthearted repartee.
Really a worthwhile read. Fans of golden age British crime shouldn't pass it up since there won't be anymore classics from the original sources.
Four and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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