A Fatal Gilded High Note

Roderick and Valentine DeVere have two pastimes that, like all good loving couples, they share. One is mixing up cocktails (scandalous for women to drink at the turn of the century), the other is solving murders. When a coal magnate is killed in the opera box next to them, the police turn to the DeVeres to investigate quietly. The couple soon find themselves embroiled in a mess of family and financial betrayal, with suspects everywhere they turn.

The story itself was intriguing, and I do always love a mystery dabbled in by amateur detectives. Cecelia Tichi does an excellent job of bringing the era to life, and the little details made me feel as though I had stepped into a period drama. Unfortunately, the dialogue had a tendency to drag, and I found myself bogged down in its slower pace. The story and characters are clearly meant to be lively, but the dialogue never quite matched the pace of the narration. If I loved the book at all, it was for what it could have been, rather than for what it was.