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.
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
Blog:
https://francesca-scriblerus.blogspot.com/http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6437832.Lucienne_Boyce
Follow the tour:
Thank you so much for such a lovely review and for being part of the blog tour!
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