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Tuesday 26 November 2019

BLOG TOUR: Death Makes No Distinction: A Dan Foster Mystery - Lucienne Boyce


The Rachel's Random Resources Blog Tour for Death Makes No Distinction by Lucienne Boyce is visiting my blog today and I am delighted to release my review as part of the tour.


Two women at opposite ends of the social scale, both brutally murdered.

Principal Officer Dan Foster of the Bow Street Runners is surprised when his old rival John Townsend requests his help to investigate the murder of Louise Parmeter, a beautiful writer who once shared the bed of the Prince of Wales. Her jewellery is missing, savagely torn from her body. Her memoirs, which threaten to expose the indiscretions of the great and the good, are also missing.

Frustrated by the chief magistrate’s demand that he drop the investigation into the death of the unknown beggar woman, found savagely raped and beaten and left to die in the outhouse of a Holborn tavern, Dan is determined to get to the bottom of both murders. But as his enquiries take him into both the richest and the foulest places in London, and Townsend’s real reason for requesting his help gradually becomes clear, Dan is forced to face a shocking new reality when the people he loves are targeted by a shadowy and merciless adversary.

The investigation has suddenly got personal.


What did I think?

Having loved Bloodie Bones, the first Dan Foster Mystery, I have been eager to get back to this period of Georgian history.  Although I haven't yet read book 2, I didn't feel disadvantaged at all as Lucienne Boyce gives enough of Dan Foster's back story to fill in any blanks I may have had.

Dan Foster's story is one thread of the book and I'll come back to that in a moment, but the murders he is investigating are the main story.  Dan is just about to investigate the brutal murder of a penniless woman, presumed to be a prostitute, when a lady of higher class is murdered and his focus is forcibly shifted.  Dan isn't the sort of policeman to give up without a fight (pun intended) and it is his talent for pugilism that draws him into boxing at the request of the Prince of Wales.  I love that word 'pugilism', it makes boxing sound so fancy!

There's a lot going on in Dan's life at the moment; he has a wife and a son, although his wife isn't his son's mother.  As if that isn't intriguing enough, he is also in love with his wife's sister who has just got married.  What on earth have I missed?  I need to read The Butcher's Block immediately!  Although I have clearly missed things by missing out book 2; it didn't spoil my enjoyment one bit, it just makes book 2 all the more alluring to me in order to fully fill in the blanks.

I really felt as if I had been transported to the slums of London when reading Death Makes No Distinction.  I think with the Prince of Wales featuring and gentlemen huzzah-ing now and again, I pictured the scene somewhat like Blackadder III, with garishly painted ladies of the night and drunken madams frequenting the pubs and rowdy drunken lords patronising the gentlemens clubs.

The murder mystery aspect is excellent and there are so many suspects that I really couldn't have guessed who the actual perpetrators were.  I think it was because it was so hard to guess that I didn't really try to work it out and just enjoyed the thrill of sniffing out clues along with Dan Foster.

Death Makes No Distinction is a superb historical murder mystery with a down to earth and realistic protagonist.  I think it could definitely be read as a standalone and I have no doubt that any readers picking up Dan Foster's story at this stage will be eager to read the previous books too.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:


Buy it from:
Book Depository
Wordery
Foyles
Amazon UK
Amazon US




About the author:

Lucienne Boyce writes historical fiction, non-fiction and biography. After gaining an MA in English Literature (with Distinction) with the Open University in 2007, specialising in eighteenth-century fiction, she published her first historical novel, To The Fair Land, in 2012, an eighteenth-century thriller set in Bristol and the South Seas.

Her second novel, Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery (2015) is the first of the Dan Foster Mysteries and follows the fortunes of a Bow Street Runner who is also an amateur pugilist. Bloodie Bones was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016, and was also a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction 2016. The second Dan Foster Mystery, The Butcher’s Block, was published in 2017 and was awarded an IndieBrag Medallion in 2018. The third in the series, Death Makes No Distinction, was published in 2019. In 2017 an e-book Dan Foster novella, The Fatal Coin, was trade published by SBooks.

In 2013, Lucienne published The Bristol Suffragettes, a history of the suffragette movement in Bristol and the west country. In 2017 she published a collection of short essays, The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign.

Contributions to other publications include:-

‘Not So Militant Browne’ in Suffrage Stories: Tales from Knebworth, Stevenage, Hitchin and Letchworth (Stevenage Museum, 2019)

‘Victoria Lidiard’ in The Women Who Built Bristol, Jane Duffus (Tangent Books, 2018)

‘Tramgirls, Tommies and the Vote’ in Bristol and the First World War: The Great Reading Adventure 2014 (Bristol Cultural Development Partnership/Bristol Festival of Ideas, 2014)

Articles, interviews and reviews in various publications including Bristol Times, Clifton Life, The Local Historian, Historical Novels Review (Historical Novel Society), Nonesuch, Bristol 24/7, Bristol History Podcast, etc.

Lucienne has appeared on television and radio in connection with her fiction and non-fiction work. She regularly gives talks and leads walks about the women’s suffrage movement. She also gives talks and runs workshops on historical fiction for literary festivals, Women’s Institutes, local history societies, and other organisations. She has been a radio presenter on BCfm, and a course tutor.

In 2018 she was instrumental in devising and delivering Votes for Women 100, a programme of commemorative events by the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network in partnership with Bristol M Shed and others. She also campaigned and raised funds for a Blue Plaque for the Bristol and West of England Women’s Suffrage Society.

She is on the steering committee of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network, and is also a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Society of Authors, and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

She is currently working on the fourth full-length Dan Foster Mystery, and a biography of suffrage campaigner Millicent Browne.

Lucienne was born in Wolverhampton and now lives in Bristol.

Social Media Links –
Twitter: @LucienneWrite




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1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much for such a lovely review and for being part of the blog tour!

    ReplyDelete