A Legacy of Murder (A Kate Hamilton Mystery #2)

Author:  Connie Berry
Genre:   Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781643851549
Crooked Lane Books
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
October 8, 2019

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It's Christmastime and antiques dealer Kate Hamilton is off to visit her daughter, Christine, in the quaint English village of Long Barston.  Christine and her boyfriend, Tristan, work at stately-but-crumbling Finchley Hall.  Touring the Elizabethan house and grounds, Kate is intrigued by the docent's tales of the Finchley Hoard, and the strange deaths surrounding the renowned treasure trove.  But next to a small lake, Kate spies the body of a young woman, killed by a garden spade.

Nearly blind Lady Barbara, who lives at Finchley with her loyal butler, Mugg, persuades Kate to take over the murdered woman's work.  Kate finds that a Burmese ruby has vanished from the legendary Blood-Red Ring, replaced by a lesser garnet.  Were the theft and the woman's death connected?

Kate learns that Lady Barbara's son fled to Venezuela years before, suspected of murdering another young woman.  The murder weapon belonged to an old gardener, who becomes the leading suspect.  But is Lady Barbara's son back to kill again?  When another body is found, the clues point toward Christine.  It's up to Kate to clear her daughter's name.

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It's nearing Christmas and Kate Hamilton, an American antiques dealer, is visiting England to see both her daughter Christine and her new boyfriend Tom Mallory, a DI with the Suffolk police.  She's staying in a private room on the Finchley estate where her daughter works as an intern, and she, too, is housed there.  On this day she's taking a tour of the estate while Christine is in orientation.  But the tour is cut short when a young boy - who is on the tour along with his mother - discovers the body of a young woman in the pond.

It turns out the woman is Tabitha King, who also worked as an intern.  She was designing and preparing an exhibit on the estate - an exhibit of The Hoard, the Finchley treasure - which had only been seen as partial items on exhibit throughout the years.  This was to be the first time that the entire Hoard would be shown.

When Kate finally meets Christine's new boyfriend, Tristan Sorel, she takes an instant dislike to him, but says nothing to Christine, having realized that Christine was always attracted to men who were less than she thought they were, and she believed Tristan to be another of this ilk.

But then the lady of the manor, Barbara Finchley, is determined that the Hoard will be shown, because they've already sold tickets and the estate needs the funding.  When she discovers Kate's background in antiques, she eventually gets her to agree to take over Tabitha's job.  But it's not too long before Kate finds Tabitha's notes and discovers discrepancies; it seems pieces that should be in the group are not, and no one seems to know where they've gone to.

But there's more drama afoot when Tristan is pursued by Alex, who works at the estate.  She makes an overt play for him, and he doesn't resist very much.  Now, with Christine angry at both Tristan and Alex, a dead girl that's turned out not to be a suicide, and missing pieces from the collection, how will Kate find time to be with Tom while he's investigating a murder?  And is the murderer among them - one of the interns, an employee, or a mysterious stranger who's been traveling through town?  Kate's up to her ears in intrigue, and she needs to find out the truth before she's due to return home to spend Christmas with her mother...if she ever does...

This is the second book in the series and I have to say that I did like it much better than the first.  The author is finding her way and honing the characters, and we have more depth and feeling out of Kate than we did in the first book, so that's a good thing.

Following are a couple of plot points that bothered me, but I have hidden them in a spoiler for those who have not as yet read the book:

However, I'm still of two minds: on the one hand I loved the plot and thought the mystery was well done, but on the other hand I couldn't stand Christine. How could Kate have raised such a selfish, immature, self-centered daughter, and then make excuses for her bad behavior?

To wit: Christine is not passionate, she's immature. What adult throws things at another woman she's angry with, pouts and buries her face in her blankets to cry? This is pre-teen behavior, not that of an adult. She refuses to discuss the situation with her mother (who could at least offer her another point of view) and is extremely rude to Kate.

She's upset that Kate is dating Tom and is rude to him (more childish behavior) because her father has been dead only three years and she tells Kate that she's still in mourning and shouldn't be seeing anyone. Three. Years. How long is Kate supposed to wear the black before her daughter deems it "acceptable" that she has a life? How long is she supposed to be lonely, living by herself? Let's face it, people aren't spending all their time mobbing antique shops, either, so she's probably even there by herself a lot.

It seems she doesn't want her mom to be happy - doesn't care if she's lonely, considering both she and her brother live overseas and don't make an effort to come home; and her mom doesn't even have pets. (It reminds me of that old '50s movie, All That Heaven Allows with Jane Wyman. Jane's daughter and son throw a fit because she's dating Rock Hudson and their father has only been dead five years - and breaks them up; then buy their mom a TV set for Christmas so she won't be lonely. Earlier in the film, having a TV was mentioned as being for people whose life was pretty much over and they spent their time sitting in front of it. These were two selfish kids, and Christine reminds me of that.

Everything about her screams spoiled child, and I certainly wouldn't want to spend time with her. I disliked her immensely because of this and how she treated her mother - she hated the fact Kate was dating Tom, but wouldn't listen to her mother's reservations about Tristan. Does that sound very adult to you? She also acted like a teenager around him - fawning over him, etc. - and didn't spend any time at all with Kate. She never even apologized to her mom for her behavior, and I didn't understand why she'd go to jail for Tristan after the way he treated her, or that he would allow her to. He never went to the police and said Christine didn't try to kill Alex. What a weasel. She should have told him to man up.

I also didn't like the fact that Kate didn't seem to care that Tom lost a promotion because of her anger. She couldn't see that he was trying to do his job and that he was doing what he could to keep Christine comfortable. She'd rather fill herself with hate - no matter the reasons why, she still cost him a promotion. I'm sure it won't keep her up at night, but I consider it a crappy thing to do. And just like her daughter, she never apologized or tried to make it right.

Then Kate, for some odd reason, decided to "talk British." Americans don't say 'packet of paper', we say 'ream of paper'. We don't say 'crisps', we say 'potato chips'; 'baked potato' not 'jacket potato'; 'tennis shoes' not 'trainers' - well, you get the idea. Just because you're visiting England you wouldn't talk like them. A British person visiting the USA isn't going to suddenly start saying 'sweater' instead of 'jumper' or 'cookies' instead of 'biscuits'. (She could have put the British terms in parentheses or vice versa and it would have made more sense). That's like saying a person from New York visiting Texas is suddenly going to be saying "y'all" after a couple of days there. They won't. They're on vacation, just like Kate. So I didn't get the "Brit talk" at all; it was starting to get on my nerves. I actually wanted to tell her to knock it off, that she was American, for goodness' sake. (I travel, and I certainly don't start speaking like the natives after a few days).

However, once I got past the annoying things, the book took a decent turn and I followed the clues along with Kate right down to the end of the book.  When the killer was revealed it was actually a bit of a surprise, but even in its being necessary, there is no excuse for murder to keep secrets hidden.

I will say of all the characters introduced in this book, I liked the one of Ivor Tweedy the best.  Although I knew from the beginning where the ending was going to go, he was such a whimsical character, full of exuberance of life.  I hope to see much more of him in later books.  All in all, I really did enjoy this book and hope to see the next in the series arrive soon.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Murder-Kate-Hamilton-Mystery/dp/1643851543/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2870311960

More on Connie Berry's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/connie-berry/

A Dream of Death

Author:  Connie Berry
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781683319870
Crooked Lane Books
320 Pages
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
April 9, 2019

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On a remote Scottish Island, American antique dealer Kate Hamilton sleuths a killing that eerily replicates a murder still unsolved after 200 years.

Autumn has come and gone on Scotland's Isle of Rothsay, and the locals gather for the Tartan Ball, the annual end-of-tourist season gala.  Among the invited guests is American antique dealer Kate Hamilton.  Returning to the island where her husband died is brutal, but Kate is determined to repair her relationship with her sister-in-law, Elenor Spurgeon, the proprietor of Rothsay's deluxe country house hotel.

Kate has hardly unpacked when a body turns up, murdered in an eerie recreation of an infamous unsolved murder two hundred years before.  And the only clue to the killer's identity lies in a curiously embellished antique casket.  When Bo Duff, the gentle handyman who had tried to save Kate's husband's life, is taken into custody, she teams up with vacationing Detective Inspector Tom Mallory to clear Bo's name.  To accomplish that, they'll have to unmask a killer who seems bizarrely fixated on the past...because two hundred years is an awfully long time to hold a grudge.

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Kate Hamilton is a young widow who hasn't been back to the Scottish island where her husband grew up and later died; she wouldn't be there now if it weren't for a telephone call from her sister-in-law begging her to come.

When she arrives she finds her late husband Bill's family home much changed; his sister Elenor has turned it into a hotel (which she did know) and renovated the property to the point of being unrecognizable to her.  While she's curious to find what it is Elenor found so dire she needed Kate's help, Elenor refuses to tell her until after the annual Tartan Ball that evening.

But there's more surprise yet - at the ball, Elenor announces her engagement to a local, Hugh Guthrie, who's written a book about an eighteenth-century inhabitant, a copy of which Elenor has left for Kate to read.  But when Elenor is found dead that evening by an arrow to the neck - the same way as the woman in the book - Kate wonders if the coincidence is more than that.

When Bill's childhood friend and protector Bo Duff is accused of the murder, Kate knows that it's not possible, but it seems the police aren't interested.  Then when she starts to receive threatening notes she also wonders if she's not right about Elenor's murder - and if the killer is closer than she wants them to be...

Since this is a new author, I usually try to give them a pass as to setting and characters; and while I thought the setting wasn't given much aside from descriptions of the hotel, I didn't really get a feel for Kate; she seemed withdrawn into herself, showing very little emotion at all and somewhat with a dull personality, but perhaps this is what the author was going for; after all, she was widowed at a young age and didn't seem to handle the loss.  For myself, I couldn't see how Tom was interested in her, though why she seemed intelligent enough, it was this dullness of personality that bothered me.  I couldn't imagine her enjoying much in life.

Aside from that the mystery was written well and I enjoyed the story line.  The clues were there throughout but the culprit wasn't that easy to figure out.  There was plenty of intrigue and suspense as Kate went about trying to find Elenor's killer.  With enough twists and turns to keep anyone interested, this is an admirable first novel.  Since I love mysteries, I decided to read it, and was not disappointed; but I won't say any more about it, because I don't want to give away the ending to anyone, but I will say I would have liked to see it end differently, not that it was bad, for it was not; but I just would have preferred otherwise.

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Death-Connie-Berry/dp/1683319877/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2705467892

More on Connie Berry's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/connie-berry/