Witty Little Knitter

Since I started reading the Lady Daisy-series I really wanted to review one properly but somehow never got around. Now that 'Death in the Water' also happens to be the 50th book I've read this year I thought that would give me good reason to finally do one. Unfortunately it's in my opinion so far the weakest Lady Daisy-novel.It still has good moments. I like how the relationship between Daisy and Alec is portrayed, neither as all rainbows and butterflies nor any kind of forced conflicts just for the sake of some drama. You clearly see that the care for each other but neither of them can completely shake off doubts about their two very different worlds colliding. Dunn also paints a really vivid picture of the 1920s and also doesn't take her readers for completely stupid and feels the need to spell everything out for them.I fear that's everything good I can say about this book. The crime-plot was overall just mediocre and had an ending that just left me thinking 'WHAT?'. Apart from that the characters – usually one of the strengths in the Daisy-novels – just made me go 'meh'. There's the victim, Basil DeLancey, and he is a massive jerk, now murder-victims in cosy crime-novels are rarely portrayed overly sympathetic but he is taking it up to eleven. I don't think he says just one sentence where he isn't insulting somebody. He doesn't have one single redeeming quality and I really wondered why he was only killed round page 80 (which, by the way, I find a bit late for a novel that's only 250 pages) and not long before the book started. Bott, DeLancey's main bullying-victim and therefore the prime-suspect in his murder is unfortunately not much more likeable. He's not mean, but just really terribly stupid. He takes every single bait DeLancey throws at him and then whines about how mean everybody is. He also more or less accuses Daisy of disliking him because he isn't upper-class before she said one word to him. Then, after DeLancey's murder he seems to be ticking off a list 'How to make me look really suspicious if I'm involved in a murder'Of course I never wanted him to be wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit but it's just hard to feel sympathy for somebody if every time he screams about being wrongly accused I think 'Well, you did basically everything to make you suspicious, except painting bloody arrows, leading to your room.'The other side-characters suffer from something that also happened in the previous Daisy-novels but wasn't as significant then. Somehow the author feels the need to introduce always all characters at once, it's always a bit strange if just one character after the other comes to Daisy and introduces him/herself including their back-story but so far I could life with it. Also because the characters were easy to tell apart, they were all ages, men and women, different jobs, etc. Here all the side-characters are students who are in a rowing-team (and their girlfriends). Once I had managed to remember who was who the book was already over.All in all, I was quite disappointed and hope Daisy will be back to normal again in the next book.