Windows To The World

Dying In the Wool by Frances Brody
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate Shackleton  is a woman in her thirties who persists  in believing that her husband Gerald is still alive but MIA from WWI. Everybody else considers her a widow. She has spent quite a bit of time searching for him in vain but she did acquire the skills necessary to find people. Many others have been rewarded when she found relatives of theirs also MIA.

Kate takes on a case of a missing father for a friend who was also in the VAD, (Volunteer Aid). In other words yet another plucky ambulance driver alá Maisie Dobbs, Jade DeCameron and Phryne Fisher from the pages of other mystery writers who have plucky heroine ex-ambulance drivers as protagonists.

In this case the missing man was not in the armed services, rather he took a tumble, hit his head  and everyone stupidly decided he was suicidal so he ran away. The story is more interesting than it sounds but it takes until the last sixth of the book to spark your interest. There are a few gimmeabreak moments in the exposition of this mystery and you can't quite feel any sympathy for the girl who is missing her father, or for the father for that matter.

The depiction of the times was good and the description of the area was nice but it suffers in comparison just a bit with similar protagonists.

I may read the next in the series to see if it gets any stronger.