Secure Your Copy Anthem For Doomed Youth (Daisy Dalrymple, #19) Constructed By Carola Dunn Available Through EReader Version

Dunn returns with a particularly strong entry in her Daisy Dalrymple series in Anthem for Doomed Youth, Eight years after the Armistice that brought to a close the First World War, implications from that arise again in one of Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher's more grisly cases.
He gets a report that three bodies have been found in Epping Forest, the stereotypical burying ground of murdered bodies from London, They seem to have been buried at separate rules, the most recent a week ago, the middle one a couple months ago, and the oldest one a year ago.
And all have pins on their jackets over they heart, with the most recent body's pin holding a piece of paper spelling out "justice, " The only good side to this job is that it is far enough removed from the Fletchers' home that Daisy can't find herself involved, Thus Alec is more willing than usual to discuss details of the case with Daisy, And Daisy's friend Sakari, the Indian wife of a highly important official at the India office, wants to know all the details,

Read the rest of this review and other fun, geeky articles at sitelinkFangirl Nation Anthem for Doomed Youth is the nineteenth in Dunn's light but entertaining Daisy Dalrymple mystery series.
Set in postWorldWarI era Britain, the series features the Hon, Daisy, daughter of a noble house, and her commoner beau later husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher

of Scotland Yard, The series is populated by a number of enjoyable recurring characters, including Alec's assistants, Tom Tring and Ernie Piper, and several of Daisy's friends from both the nobility and the middle class.
Daisy has an unfortunate habit of attracting dead bodies if I were acquainted with her, I'd run, not walk, to the nearest exit, which does not endear her to Alec's superior, Superintendent Crane.


In the latest installment of the series, Alec is investigating a triple murder, literally unearthed in Epping Forest, while Daisy and two of her friends visit their daughters' boarding school for sports day.
Inevitably, one of the girls finds a dead body, the boys' games master from the school, and equally inevitably, his murder may be connected to Alec's casealthough the reader figures this out long before Alec does.


While I've enjoyed most of the books in the series, I found this one a little disconcerting, To begin with, the girls' school is the Friends' School Saffron Walden, a real Quaker school still in operation today,  Most of the fictional teachers are Quakers, yet several of them seem perfectly willing to withhold evidence and cover up their own or others' misdeeds, an attitude which is not at all in accordance with Quaker principles.
 Granted, the fact that they are teaching at a Friends' school doesn't mean they are necessarily Quaker, but in fact, one of them is portrayed as quite committed to Quaker beliefs, so his suppression of the truth is jarring.
 Daisy, too, seems uncharacteristically willing to keep her own suspicions and knowledge a secret even from her husband,  These factors lead to an ending which is something less than satisfactory,

That said, if you enjoy the Englishcozy genre, you might give this series a try, Dunn does a good job of balancing humor with the seriousness of murder, and she has a deft touch with the changing social mores ofs England.


I was raised as a Quaker and attended Quaker schools myself,   I find it impossible to imagine any of my Quaker teachers behaving in a like manner,

originally published at sitelinkThe Bookwyrm's Hoard,

This was a disturbing tale, Daisy was her usual competent charming self but she made some choices that I am not sure were ethical, and the background story was quite sad.
Others have mentioned the very troubling bit about Daisy knowing the truth of theth murder and choosing to conceal that from her husband.
Letting her character do this, the author puts her firmly above the law, It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth, Near the end of the book, D has the conversation where the guilty man unburdens his soul and confesses It was an accident, he said, the result of his temper, but he now realized he must learn how to control that.
Yes, of course I agree he must, But I hardly think covering up involuntary manslaughter is going to help a person do that, It also reminded me strongly of the sort of things someone who is physically abusing another person says in a whiny, pleading tone, while promising that it would never happen again.
It seldom works that way, Add to that the weight of a guilty conscience, And how do you think the relationship between the otherwill work Having helped someone avoid the consequences of the law, they'll be able to just waltz into a bright future and live as if nothing happened My, my.

By and large, I would find these things easier to stomach if the author weren't trying to be serious about things like the war and PTSD although not yet called that.
There are so many potentially great themes in the book that are trampled by the conduct of DaisyIknowbetterthanthou, I think the author does herself and her readers a disservice by having written like this, Either stay light and airy fairy or dive in and take it seriouslybut stick to the rule of law, in that case, Another installment of the Daisy Dalrymple series but I was not as enthusiastic about this one, It kind of dragged along slowly and was harder to read than most of the series, Three men are found shot in a woods and Alec is charged with finding the murderer, It is discovered that the victims were all in the same army unit during the War WWI but that is the only connection that can be found.
Daisy, in the meantime, has traveled to visit her stepdaughter Bel at school, They are having a sports weekend and Daisy and her two best friends have all come together to visit their children, Of course, knowing Daisy, a body is found and she is in the middle of a murder, The question is are the murders Alec is investigating related to the murder Daisy discovered Hmmmm, The amazing thing about Daisy is that, like most English women of her age, she has been surrounded by tragedy during her young life, She has lost her brother, her father and her fiancé, Her bland, serene girlhood unfolds into unimaginable loss, By the time she goes to her stepdaughter's school, she has put most of that behind her, This short mystery reminds us that the English of the Twenties were trying to overcome the loss of,young men, the cream of England, While we all look down our noses at Chamberlain and can't understand his "appeasement," the loss of a huge percentage of young men, dominated his ideas.
This very sweet mystery reminds us of how remote we are from loss on this scale, One of the better ones in this good series finds Daisy taking a seemingly innocent holiday to visit daughter Bel at her boarding school for Sports Day while husband Alex of Scotland Yard deals with a nasty case of three bodies buried in a public park.
Daisy being Daisy, she trips over a body soon enought, that of the boys PE teacher at her daughters school, Dunn does a good job filling in nice details about little known aspects of the WWI, including the problems faced by consciousous objectors, and the nasty way that some in the British military dealt with shell shock.
The reason behind the killings is one of the most emotionally sticky ones for this cosy series, I have enjoyed theentries before this one in this series, I loved this one, too, but I will say it was a bit different than most in that it didn't have the same breezy, light tone as the others.
Rather, it dealt with some sad, realitybased issues in the aftermath of WWI,

It was also unusual in that for most of the book Daisy and her husband Aleck are occupied in different places with unrelated circumstances.
And unusually, it is Aleck's case that holds center stage the plot is complex and troubling, and Aleck's sensitive handling of it is well shown, Of course, they reunite at the end, and the author does her best to leave us on the lighter note to which we are accustomed,

It's a tricky book to discuss without including big plot spoilers, so I will say only this: be sure to read the author's note at the end, as it gives some historical perspective for the events of the book that are sadder and even more troubling, but are valuable for helping explain why this book dealt with such a somber topic Characters I didnt care about, with a theme done better in the Maisie Dobbs books.
Somewhat confusing, and didnt hold my interest, Maybe at this point I should give up on the series, I find Daisy irritating. Daisy goes to Saffron Walden to attend her stepdaughter Bels sports day, as her husband Alec has had to stay in London where he has been assigned to a murder case three bodies found in Epping Forest.
Daisy cant resist involving herself in the case and discovers links between the three victims based on their service in WWI, As Alec and his team investigate, Daisy finds herself dragged into another crime at the school

This was quite good fun, with Daisy and her friend Sakari on good form as they avoid the heavy handed questioning of the buffoonish Inspector Gant.
The WWI theme adds a touch of poignancy and overall I found this pretty enjoyable,

However, there a couple of weaknesses in the plot which resulted in me knocking off a star, One is the rather weak and unconvincing way that Alec identifies the culprit, and the other is the resolution of the final crime where a moral dilemma is decided without addressing potential long term consequences.
Still, this is a cosy mystery after all, so best not to dwell on that and just accept it as a fun historical mystery, I've enjoyed this series quite a bit, and like the easybreezy style of the heroine and narrative, This particular book was a little different more emphasis on the war than previous books, The plot line of the murders is quite sad I won't give away what that's all about, but the motive and the main part of the resolution are really kind of tragic, and that was the best part of the book.
However, there is a second part to the resolution, and this really bothered me, Daisy finds out that the fourth victim was killed by someone other than the person who killed the first three.
Alec is convinced the same person did all four, and that murderer isn't around to say differently, Daisy decides not to tell Alec about the other murderer, because she sympathises with him, Daisy's decision in this regard seemed somewhat understandable in terms of her emotional reasons, but at the same time, completely wrong if Alec had any idea about it, he would be in an impossible position, ethically and professionally.
This gave me an "are you kidding me" moment, and definitely took some of the shine off the book, .