Monday, July 20, 2020

Lineage Most Lethal by S.C. Perkins

First Line: "Stop," I begged. "Please."

Hotel heiress Pippa Sutton has invited genealogist Lucy Lancaster to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's at the swanky Hotel Sutton. Lucy will be relaxing, but she'll also be putting the finishing touches on her presentation for Pippa and her family. Things take a turn for the bizarre when a man staggers up to her outside the hotel, presses a classic Montblanc pen into her hand, collapses, and dies.

Since Lucy's grandfather is an avid Montblanc collector, she takes the pen to him. Not only does he recognize the pen, he reveals the fact that he was an Allied spy during World War II. The pen is a message regarding one of his wartime missions.

When people begin dying whose names happen to be on a microdot found in the pen, Lucy has to work fast-- her beloved grandfather's life is in jeopardy.

S.C. Perkins' Ancestry Detective mystery series is turning out to be delightful. Lucy Lancaster is one bright woman who, after the events in the first book in the series (Murder Once Removed), took a CPR class, a self-defense class, and went to a counselor. So many amateur sleuths never seem to take these precautions, so I always appreciate it when I see it happen. Lucy also keeps going to the police with the information she uncovers even though she's not being taken seriously.

Readers learn quite a bit about Lucy's grandfather in Lineage Most Lethal. It seems the old man has been keeping quite a few secrets under wraps. There are even codes to decipher which I always enjoy. Having helped my mother and grandmother with our family history, I was intrigued by Lucy's use of something called Soundex, a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound as pronounced in English. If my mother had known about Soundex, she might have been able to trace a very elusive family name. Who says you can't learn anything by reading mysteries?

World War II, spies, secret missions, microdots, codes, and a lead character who makes me smile. I can't wait to see what Lucy Lancaster gets up to in her next adventure.

Lineage Most Lethal by S.C. Perkins
eISBN: 9781250750082
Minotaur Books © 2020
eBook, 336 pages

Cozy Mystery, #2 Ancestry Detective mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Net Galley

7 comments:

  1. What an interesting plot point, Cathy - a Montblanc pen! That's intriguing as it is, and I've always thought ancestry is a great context for a series; there's just so much there. No wonder you liked this one!

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    1. This second book is even better than the first, so now I'm really looking forward to book #3!

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  2. I've got this one on my list to read as well ass the first in the series. They sound delightful and this author is also a local-ish one for me. Codes and spies and secret missions - I'm so there!

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    1. The Austin setting always makes me think of you although I know you don't live there.

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  3. I loved the cover when I first saw it, and now after reading your description of the book, it's kind of fun to see all the hints of what's to come that are built into that image. Too, I have a small collection of Mont Blanc pens from about 20 years ago, so this one kind of appeals to me for that reason, too.

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    1. I think it was really cool what Perkins did with that pen!

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