Book Review: Dandy Gilver and A Bothersome Number of Corpses by Catriona McPherson

Bottom Line: This, the seventh book featuring Dandy Gilver by Catriona McPherson, is one of the strongest in the series with beautiful characterization and enough complication to make it fun to read.

I ran across the first Dandy Gilver book in my local library when I was on the hunt for a work by another author. Set in post-WWI Scotland, it featured what was left of the landed gentry, dressing for dinner, and servants. Since I was in a Downton Abbey mood, I tried it and have stuck with the series because I find McPherson's writing to be interesting.

For a cozy series, and let's not kid anyone because that's what these books are, they cover lots of ground. The title character is Dandy, short for Dandelion, who is married to Hugh, a solid gentleman with enough land to be somewhat of consequence. Dandy is persuaded to start investigating mysterious happenings, at first by a close friend, and then later in response to more distance acquaintances and word-of-mouth advertisements. In this most recent book, McPherson takes the readers into Dandy's memories of a youthful idyllic summer spent with friends before bringing things back up to speed in Dandy's adult life with murders, mysterious school mistresses, and a charming Italian.

One thing McPherson does well is create diverse characters with their own voices. The schoolgirls sound different from each other, the mistress have their own energy, and the transition of one of the characters from youthful blithe spirit into something else entirely has its own reality in this fictional world. McPherson also has fun playing with Dandy's relationship to her rather stodgy husband who tolerates her detecting because of the money it brings in and her sons, one of whom is turning out to be much less talented scholastically than hoped for. Dandy's close working companion, Alec Osborne, excites all kinds of comments and rumors from people on the periphery, but unlike other crime detecting duos (Castle and Beckett come to mind) there is no steamy undercurrent of desire. They work as a duo, without much sexism, and it seems to be staying that way.

I find these books perfect for when I want some light reading featuring a strong female lead and charming Scottish folk set in rugged countryside.