Lead Review (The Dacre Dilemma)
- Book: The Dacre Dilemma
- Location: The Lake District
- Author: Rebecca Tope
Rebecca Tope is well known for writing crime mysteries with a good sense of place. The Dacre Dilemma is no.15 in The Lake District Mystery Series and she also pens series set elsewhere in England: The Cotswold Mysteries and The West Country Mysteries.
This is a welcome return to familiar characters. Simmy is married to Christopher, who is in the auction business. She herself runs a flower shop and is deliberating expansion, but given her personal circumstances at the moment, she is feeling rather overwhelmed by the prospect. It might mean them moving from where they are settled in their converted barn in Hartsop, where Simmy truly feels at home. A house move isn’t an option she is keen to explore.
Christopher has asked her to deliver some flowers to the sexagenarian, Eleanor Pagett, who is restoring textiles at Dacre Castle. She chooses cosmos, freesias and lilies and then has to seek out the “perky yellow camper van” in which the older woman is currently living. Locating it by Dacre’s graveyard, Simmy makes her acquaintance and is persuaded to peek at the bears, carved years ago and now, due to wear and tear, only recognisable to those who know; or nearby there is Dalemain, the “marmalade palace” (The World Marmalade Awards, founded by Jane Hasell-McCosh, are held annually at Dalemain), so it is clear that, as a reader, you will pick up interesting nuggets of local knowledge, which the author delightfully likes to include in the narrative.
As they explore the graveyard, It is unfortunately Simmy’s two year old son Robin who spots the ‘red man’ lying on the ground. And thus she will have to once again don her sleuthing cape.
She discovers more about the dead young man and his provenance, she has a fair idea of the people who might have had it in for him, and she works once again with her familiar partner in the police force, DI Moxon.
This is a nicely penned series that blends family life with gentle amateur sleuthing, all set against a great Lake District backdrop. The novel can be read as a standalone.
Please wait...
