Tue 10 Apr 2012
CAROLA DUNN – Anthem for Doomed Youth. St. Martin’s/Minotaur Books, hardcover, March 2011; trade paperback, February 2012.
It is hard to believe that this is the 19th in Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series. It has to rank high in the list of long-running series still in progress, and it’s all the more remarkable considering that the first one, Death at Wentwater Court, was published in 1994, which (at times) seems like only yesterday.
Of course, unless you hadn’t heard, Daisy is now Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, happily married to DCI Alex Fletcher of Scotland Yard, and the stepmother of one young lady and the mother of a pair of twins just beyond infancy. The only source of discontent between husband and wife is when Daisy manages to get involved in one of Alex’s cases, which happens, to the avowed disapproval of Alex’s superiors, more often than not.
A long-running series means that readers have gotten fond of a character and keep coming back for more. It has to be challenge to keep the character interesting – which means change – while not annoying readers — who might not like change as much as an author does, not wishing to tell the same story over and over.
From my perspective, the series has changed noticeably since I last read one of them, which was very early on in her list of cases to be solved. Daisy’s adventure then – I misremember which – was light-hearted and cozy all the way through. She was young at the time, while in Anthem she seems a lot more matronly, or well on her way to such status, with equally matronly friends with children the same ages as hers.
The story in Anthem is darker, too, reflecting the time in England a lot more accurately than I recall was the case in her earlier adventures. It is 1926, between the wars, and it is the aftereffects of the first one that are at the root of the three murders Alex is confronted with: three men shot through the heart and buried in an isolated woods at staggered times over the past few months.
This makes Alex’s half of the story the primary one, one he deals with competently but without great challenge, but it is the cause for the darker mood of the overall story. Daisy, on the other hand, finds herself with a separate unexplained death on her hands, that of a headmaster at the boarding school her stepdaughter attends. His body is found in the middle of a maze near the school grounds, an unliked (and unlikeable) man in life, one who would make any number of wishers of his demise without half trying.
Are the two cases connected? You will have to read to find out. While the ending is worth the wait, it does take a while for Daisy to have anything to do – about 130 pages into a 290 page book. Longtime fans of the series won’t mind. Others who are not might get a little impatient.
April 11th, 2012 at 2:25 am
I thought the book was very poorly written with several errors of fact (see the reviews on Amazon for instance). There was no detection as such (if I remember correctly a ‘snout’ gave the police the name of the murderer) and the motive was obvious from the start. The ending of the book was ridiculous. I will not be trying another of her books
April 11th, 2012 at 9:00 am
Jamie
Well, it’s obvious that I liked the book a little more than you did, but the lack of detection (as opposed to rather ordinary police work) is true enough, and I agree with you 100% on that. The ending? Morally uncertain is what I might call it.
I’ll check out the Amazon reviewers in a minute, but Kirkus said this: “The latest edition to Daisy’s long string of investigations (Sheer Folly, 2009, etc.) is amusing and sprightly, and as evocative of the period as ever.”
And I used to think Kirkus was tough on mystery writers!
[…]
I’ve just returned from Amazon, US not UK. I wonder if that makes a difference. Overall they give the book 3.5 out of 5. I might go a 2 or 2.5 myself. But a number of those who did write reviews are obviously fans of Daisy and her adventures, saying things like
“more of the delightful daisy”
“I think this is probably one of the best books in this excellent series”
“Darker but better than ever”
with some complaints about the proofreading and the ending, which one or two did not understand.
April 11th, 2012 at 11:10 am
I can’t find the review on Amazon pointing out several factual errors, it seems to have been removed – it was definitely there when I looked after I read the book last year. I don’t have the book any more but I am sure there was also a major error describing the plot in the blurb on the back of the book.
April 12th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Having now had another look at a copy of the book (in the UK a paperback original), it says on the back in large letters ‘Is a deranged killer stalking Daisy through the woods?’ which is complete nonsense! I do wonder having read some of the reviews on Amazon if they read the same book as I did.
April 12th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Deranged killer stalking Daisy? Nonsense is right. Nothing like that in the version I read either. I wonder what the person who wrote that felt like the next morning.