Mystery set in 1920s London. Perfectly enjoyable read. ( )

It is an entire book of small talk. No suspense, no clues except 1, boring. It gets 2 stars because I finished it. ( )

I was intrigued by The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds because the cover was so enticing that I ignored the following truths:
1. I don’t enjoy cozy mysteries much; and
2. I don’t enjoy modern authors setting mysteries in the 1920s much.

So, this book was something of the perfect storm being both a cozy mystery and a modern author imagining a 1920s setting.

Still, I enjoyed The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds. There were enough details and likeable characters that kept me reading even though the mystery itself was not challenging to solve.
I also liked the jazz club setting.

The mystery itself was pretty straight-forward and the way that the characters set about solving the mystery was a bit laughable, but what really bugged me was that the author withheld what fabulously deadly poison was employed by the baddies. It just felt like a cop-out to describe it as “fast-acting poison” in the solution and not give the reader – well, this reader! – the chance to work out how the poisoning would have worked. (Or indeed, if it could have worked the way the author described it in the story.) I admit that this is probably a negligible detail for many readers. However, I am used to the murders of Agatha Christie’s characters being described with plausible and real poisons making up much of the mystery and just being part of the puzzle. Reading Christie has taught me to want to think about which poison may have been used. It has become part of the fun for me, and not being able to see whether my suspicions in The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds were right just left me unsatisfied. I need answers!

So, in all, it was an ok story with fun characters, but just not really my cuppa. ( )

Jazz Age, jazz-musicians, England, situational-humor, verbal-humor, laugh-riot, law-enforcement, laugh-out-loud, amateur-sleuth, family-dynamics, friendship, murder, theft*****

These jazz musicians are good friends of Lady Hardcastle in this first-in-series spinoff of another hilarious cozy mystery series. It starts off with a lot of background stuff involving previous encounters with Scotland Yard (positive), Lady Hardcastle, and The Great War before getting into why the guys were tapped to help out Superintendent Sunderland. The story is really good and full of jazzy cant and references to musicians and films from America. I loved it and laughed my way through it in one dreary afternoon!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Thomas & Mercer/ Amazon Publishing UK via Netgalley. Thank you! ( )

I have long been a fan of T.E. Kinsey's humorous Lady Hardcastle historical mystery series, so when I found out that he was branching out, I jumped at the chance to read The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds. While I didn't find it quite as much fun as following Lady Hardcastle and her redoubtable maid Florence Armstrong on their adventures, the potential is certainly there, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.

The strongest parts of this first Dizzy Heights mystery are its setting in Jazz Age London when people are still reeling from the slaughter of World War I and its superb mystery that kept me guessing every step of the way.

There are three main characters in The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds. We're first introduced to Skins Maloney's American heiress wife, Ellie, by her letters written to Florence Armstrong while Ellie was a nurse during the war. Ellie first met Skins in 1910 when he was in a band playing ragtime, and when they eventually married, the executors of her father's will invoked the "gold diggers" clause to prevent Skins from running off with all Ellie's money. They are truly in love, have a wonderful family life, and really don't care that they have to wait until their tenth wedding anniversary to come into Ellie's inheritance. Barty Dunn, on the other hand, is the quintessential single man-about-town who can't settle down and lives in a flat with a doting landlady and an old prune next-door who makes it her life's ambition to get him thrown in jail.

Part of the humor in this Dizzy Heights mystery concerns Ellie being from across the pond, and I laughed when I read this line: "I asked Cook to get corn on the cob but apparently the greengrocer looked at her like she was asking for mermaid tears collected in a unicorn horn." The differences between our two cultures are always good for a laugh, and although I didn't feel that the dialogue sparkled as much as it can (and does) in a Lady Hardcastle mystery, I know that Skins, Ellie, and Barty haven't quite hit their stride-- and I'm looking forward to the time when they do. ( )