Black Ship by Carola Dunn

It's been awhile since I've read one of Dunn's prolific Daisy Dalrymple Mystery series. I'd forgotten how much I like Daisy and her Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher husband. They make quite a team.

The theme is interesting and fresh. A man who claims to be a U.S. Treasury agent looking for people who are supplying shipments of alcoholic beverages to American crime families during the Prohibition of the 1930's shows up on the Fletcher doorstep in their new Hampstead Heath neighborhood. He's quite bumbling and has had his identity papers, passport and money stolen. Is he a real U.S. agent, or is he mixed up in the murder that very quickly happens in the communal garden on the Fletcher's street? If this Agent Lambert isn't involved, then what do the neighbors and their servants know and what have they seen? Are any of the neighbors involved?

Alec and his team of investigators do the usual thorough and methodical job that Scotland Yard and local bobbies do in Britain to investigate murder-- and they usually get the suspect in the end. It's also fund to see how Daisy interjects herself in the investigative team, and how Alec and his men use her skills without admitting too much publicly how much she helps them out.

Dunn's characters, right down to the minor ones, are always finely drawn and very memorable so it is easy to keep interest and easy to develop strong positive and negative feelings for the people you meet through her books.

The plot also raises a thought-provoking question about the role of British wine merchants in supplying American gangsters with merchandise during the Prohibition Era, and the different viewpoint that the British public had during that time about the use of alcoholic beverages versus that of Americans.

I recommend "Black Ship" for anyone who likes the quaintness of 1920's era British mysteries and that historical period.