DEATH, DIAMONDS, AND DECEPTION (A Gilded Age Mystery #5) by Rosemary Simpson will be published on November 24th, 2020 by Kensington Publishing Corporation.
Prudence MacKenzie’s domineering Aunt Gillian is in town, and she is determined to escort her niece through the New York City social season and come out at the end with a suitable husband. When she is not husband hunting for her niece, the formidable Lady Rotherton is causing a stir among the elite 400 of New York City’s upper society. At the first Assembly Ball of the season, Lady Rotherton realizes that not all the diamonds in the waterfall necklace hanging around Mrs. De Vries’ neck are real. Soon after the discovery, Mr. De Vries hires Prudence and her partner Geoffrey Hunter to figure out what happened to the real diamonds and determine who stole them. Despite Lady Rotherton not approving of her niece’s occupation as a private investigator, she jumps right into the case alongside her. As the bodies continue to pile up and the hunt for the diamonds turns up more and more sordid details, Prudence and Geoffrey are in a race against the thief/murderer before their bodies join the others in the morgue.
I am a big fan of Prudence and Geoffrey, and I’m always excited to see where their next case takes them. I enjoyed DEATH, DIAMONDS, AND DECEPTION, and I think it is a great addition to the series. It also helps move along the secondary storyline involving Prudence’s relationship with Geoffrey as well as her battle against her former addiction to laudanum. That being said, I think there was a little too much going on in this novel. I lost count of the number of dead bodies that were connected to the missing diamonds. And there seemed to be too many characters involved—not all of which had a satisfactory ending to their individual storylines. Lady Rotherton—Prudence’s Aunt Gillian—came off as a bit hypocritical. She is against Prudence’s involvement in the private detection business and wants her to conform to society, but she had no problem crossing the line and dragging Prudence along with her when it suited her purposes. She also seems like a woman with a lot of secrets. Hopefully the readers will get to learn some of those secrets in upcoming novels. Overall, I enjoyed he novel and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.