After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

Book Overview

Dandy Gilver, her husband back from the War, her children off at school and her uniform growing musty in the attic, is bored to a whimper in the spring of 1923 and a little light snooping seems like... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 184529341X
• ISBN13: 9781845293413
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Robinson Publishing
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, wonderful debut!

If you like Nancy Mitford, you'll love this series. The writing is truly impeccable, the story is riveting, and the details really transport you back in time. It's almost as if the author really DID live back then. I fell in love with Dandy and relate to her so easily. I read so many books, and adore this era, but this series is the best I've found in quite a long time. Dandy's story is a great great pleasure to me. I hope more people read this series and enjoy it as I do.

Diamonds and daughters

Shortly after the signing of the Armistice which ended WW1, British society was trying to recover some of the ways of easy living which was their lot before the war. Taxes and changes in society were altering the lives of the formerly wealthy and changes in attitudes placed people in very different positions from those which they previously took for granted. Socialite, Mrs.Duffy, claimed that her extraordinary diamond parure was stolen and replaced with paste replicas, after the Ball and accused an insurance company of trying to swindle her out of her just dues. A friend of socialite, Dandy Gilver, is the wife of the head of the insurance company and pleads with Dandy for help in bringing the culprits to justice. Dandy , with her children away at boarding school, is bored with her life, bored with her stuffy husband and sees herself as a glamorous sleuth. At Mrs.Duffy's holiday cottage. a huge fire razes the place to the ground and apparently takes the life of the newly engaged younger daughter of the house. Dandy enlists the help of the fiance of the supposedly dead girl and uncovers a trail of murder and deceit, which points directly to the girl's mother. I loved reading about the fashions and manners of the very wealthy of this period but found the whole story to be just too wordy amd meandering to be a genuinely gripping murder/mystery.

a very promising debut...

Reading "After the Armistice Ball" was almost like stepping back in time and a bit of a challenge. To begin with the author's, Catriona McPherson, style of writing was reminiscent of Nancy Mitford and E.F. Benson, with some (very) light Agatha Chrsitie-like touches thrown in. All this really takes getting uses to -- esp characters' tendency to pepper practically all their conversations with the word "darling." But once you get used to it, the book was quite the enjoyable read, full of atmosphere and colour, and fairly intriguing from beginning to end. World War I is over, and the landed gentry is beginning to feel the pinch not only of the changing times and fashions, but also monetarily-wise. All except the Esslmonts, that is. Silas and Daisy Esslmont are enjoying all the comforts and luxury that owning the very distasteful and comercial enterprise of an insurance company can bring. That is until scandal rears its ugly head. Lena Duffy has discovered to her horror that the fabulous Duffy diamonds are fakes, and she's claiming that the switch must have taken place when she was visitng the Esslemonts during the Armistice Ball. She wants Silas to pay for stolen diamonds and because he won't (because the policy has lapsed) is conducting a whispering campaign about Silas' culpability and his lack of honour. At her wit's end about what to do, Daisy, Silas's wife, hires Dandy Gilver to find out what it is Lena really wants. Bored with life at the moment, Dandy readily agrees, especially since Daisy has offered her a fee to solve her problem for her. But the last thing Dandy expected when she agreed to act as go-between for Lena and the Esslemonts was to become involved in the suspicious death of a young giril she's rather fond of, or that trying to make heads or tails as to what's going on would bring her face to face with a very cold blooded killer... Cationa McPherson has written a very absorbing debut novel. The prose style may take a little getting used to, and Dandy's tendency not to accept certain unpleasant home truths mainly because she cannot believe anyone of her set would behave that way can get a little grating, but that manner in which the author presents us with a strata of society that has had its time and that is struggling to come to grips with the change while valiantly plowing onwards, was fasincating. So that even though "After the Armistice Ball" was not very supenseful and lacked any telling plot twists and red herring suspects, it was a compelling read neonetheless. Reading of how Dandy gradually come to realise what's going on, and how she manages to solve the mystery was great fun -- I rather enjoyed the realistic manne in which the author presented us with how an amateur investigator would naturally blunder about while trying to solve her first case. A well written and enjoyable read, this is especially for readers who enjoy mysteries set in the 1920s and that is full of vibrant fun.