Diana Killian’s High Rhymes and Misdemeanors transports you to the Lake District of England, in the footsteps of the Romantic poets. Grace Hollister is there on vacation from her teaching position at St. Anne’s Academy for Girls in Los Angeles, and to do research for her doctoral dissertation on the poets of the Romantic period. If you think that sounds like a tame, pastoral and rather too academic stroll, this mystery will surprise you from the first sentence, when Grace Hollister finds a man lying face down in a stream, left for dead by an unknown assailant. Within a few pages you’ll be caught up in the story, standing in the woods at dusk near Grace’s hotel, sensing that a sinister presence lingers nearby in the deepening English twilight.
Grace resuscitates the drowning man, who turns out to be Peter Fox, her charming, if evasive, fellow guest at the Tinker’s Dam, and owner of an antiques shop called Rogue’s Gallery. By coming to Peter’s aid Grace unwittingly places herself dead in the path of various thugs in pursuit of the gewgaws they think Peter Fox has in his possession. What gewgaws, you ask? Even Peter Fox doesn’t know precisely what the items are that all these people think he has. Meanwhile Grace learns that Peter Fox has a shady past, and that someone involved in her misadventure is willing to do murder.
Grace at times regrets ever having helped the annoyingly attractive Mr. Fox to begin with, while her journey through the Lake District carries her from the picturesque hotel where she’s been staying to a deserted farmhouse, to Peter Fox’s historic Craddock House with its mysterious nooks and crannies, and even to a decrepit old estate with a claustrophobic family crypt. Grace finds herself caught up in the excitement when she begins to suspect that the gewgaws in question might have something to do with her favorite subject of study, the poet Lord Byron.
Wielding action, humor, memorable characters, and just a wee taste of poetry to her advantage, Diana Killian has crafted a fast-paced tale that is full of wit and charm. The chemistry between Grace and Peter is coupled with dialogue that breaks the reader into chuckles and a few outright guffaws. A few scene changes seemed a tiny bit abrupt, but I had just finished reading a much slower paced book, so it could be my brain was musty. This madcap mystery offers lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek entertainment. I recommend High Rhymes and Misdemeanors to anyone who likes their murder seasoned with humor, and for the reader of more serious fiction who needs to get their head out of the cobwebs and have some fun.
