Murder at the Spirit Lounge
1950s Kent. Former nun Nora Breen is bemused when her normally sceptical friend Detective Inspector Rideout accepts an invitation to a private séance held by Gore-on-Sea’s resident medium, Doreen Chimes. But when the séance ends with a dramatic death and other invited guests begin to be killed off one by one, Nora realises that she and Rideout will have to pool all their wits to catch the killer before he or she can claim their final victim – Rideout himself.
This is the second in Kidd’s Nora Breen Investigates series, but even though I haven’t (yet) read Murder at Gulls Nest, I had no difficulty in differentiating the characters or figuring how they related to one another. The author has a witty turn of phrase that makes the book highly entertaining: for instance, describing a tall, angular minor character as looking like ‘something that is difficult to fold, like an easel or a wallpaper-pasting table’. At times the plot grows rather gothic but is always leavened with black humour. I admit I solved the mystery long before the characters did, but that didn’t detract from the enjoyment I derived from the book.
If I’m being picky, ‘disinterested’ and ‘belie’ are both misused, and there isn’t a vast deal of period detail – at times, it’s possible to forget it’s meant to be a historical novel – but what there is feels authentic. The shadow of one or both World Wars hangs over all the older characters, some of whom are extremely idiosyncratic while remaining believable.
Fans of the previous novel will be pleased to know that all the quirky inhabitants of Gulls Nest boarding house make an appearance and that at least one more book is on the cards (hopefully more). A thoroughly enjoyable, darkly comic read.
