Review: The Death of Irish Nell: A Detective Lavender Short Story

The Death of Irish Nell: A Detective Lavender Short Story by Karen Charlton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Note: I received an ARC generously in exchange for an honest review.

Another Note: This is a short prequel to the full length novel The Willow Marsh Murder (releasing Feb 2020) in the Detective Lavender Mystery series. It might be a good idea to start from this one, to get a proper introduction to Lavender and Woods, the duo who try and solve their case with every obstacle within sight of their cases and fight back hard.

Honestly I have to admit that this was a very interesting and intriguing written novel, despite its short length.

The best things about this novel were 1. the fact that there's no wasting time on delving right into the case, with some flashbacks to a previous murder (which link, duhh).

2. The writing is fast-paced and kept me turning pages with intrigue over every clue they found and every obstacle they met head on.

3. Also calling out on issues such as defying the law to bring proper justice to a case that would, in most cases been ignored due to class and privilege issues (another issue the author brought forth) in the 1800s (which still happens even today, sadly), knowing how much you can exercise power to a certain degree to solve a case, age, women's clothing and their privileges and many more, all which prompt a heavy discussion and lengthy insight about how justice and the law, and certain privileges have changed the way cases and criminals have been fought and charged accordingly.

4. Supportive characters -Yes there were a couple of characters which pissed me off but in a good way (the big bad wolves heh), but all of them were nice and kind to the main protagonists and helped the case a lot. So I loved that point a lot.

5. The way the crime was committed - It wasn't so original but still the way they explained it all, I ate up every page like there was no more taste tomorrow.

Overall, I think it's definitely a sharp, swift and yet suspense-filled short prequel that you will love. A high recommend, y'all.

Until the next read,

TMR

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