Dandy makes a wonderfully real narrator and protagonist, unhappily married and a mother of two boys she has little affection for, but keen to have some fun as an amateur sleuth. If you like exciting stories with lots of action, then this isn’t for you, as the pace between the murder and the denouement slows down to where snails might well overtake it, with too much repetition. However, just as with the first book, After The Armistice Ball (also reviewed on this site), there is something compelling about it all. Scotland in the 1920s comes to life within these pages, a time straddling centuries of tradition with modern times knocking on the door, and when the spectre of the First World War still loomed. The background is what kept the pages turning for me, and surely the next best thing to a time machine is a well-researched historical novel that brings the past to life. Just flesh out that plot and skip the repetition and this series will be a winner.