Julianna Deering: Dressed for Death

By Kelly Bridgewater

Drew and Madeline Farthering celebrate their six-month anniversary by attending a fancy Regency era costume party. Drew is glad to see Talbot Cummins, an Oxford classmate, and his fiancée, Alice Henley, though many present seem worried about the couple. Everyone's concerns are realized when, at the concluding grand ball, Alice dies of an overdose of cocaine. Tal refuses to believe she took the stuff intentionally, and Drew is determined to find out if her death was an accident or murder.

Drew is shocked and disillusioned when the police arrest Tal's father and reveal that the man has been smuggling drugs into the country for the past twenty years. Reeling from the death of his fiancée and the revelation about his father, Tal begs Drew to find out what's going on. Drew, now questioning his own ability to see people as they really are, does so reluctantly, not ready for the secrets he's about to uncover--or the danger he'll bring down on everyone he holds dear.

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My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed the first three books in the Drew Farthering series by Julianna Deering. Read my complete review of Murder at Mikado. They were full of mystery and took places in the early twentieth century. I admire Drew’s detective skills and how well he solved the crime in no time. As for the newest book in this series, Dressed for Death, did not work as well as the other three for me.

First, most mysteries have a hint of the mystery that leads the book by the end of the first chapter. In Dressed for Death, it doesn’t appear until twenty-seven percent, according to my Kindle. The first part of the book is Drew, Madeline, Nick, and Carrie attending a Regency party and spending time hanging out with the Cummins. It really did not start out like a mystery for me. After the first body drops, it takes a while for the second and third body to drop with no real threat to any of the remaining characters in the story.

I do enjoy how Julianna Deering allows me to really feel like I’m in the setting. I really feel like I’m in the elaborate house, roaming the library and seeing the kitchen with the enormous pantry. The detail that Deering includes allows my imagination to run wild and place me along the characters in the beautiful home.

The main mystery has to do with cocaine but didn’t turn me away from finishing the novel. No one actually uses it on the pages of the book and it isn’t offensive at all like majority of secular novels that use cocaine in the pages of their books.

As for the bad guy, Deering threw a complete twist in because I didn’t even guess who the bad guy was. It totally took me by surprise.

Fans of cozy mysteries will devour Julianna Deering’s latest edition to her Drew Farthering Series and anxiously wait for the next one to appear. If you like Christy Barritt and Lorena McCourtney mysteries, then you will enjoy this novel.

I received a complimentary copy of Dressed for Death from Bethany House Publishers and the opinions stated are all my own.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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