Brian Deliverer is found dead, apparently by suicide. But the night before his death, Brian played bridge online with three women who own a detective agency. Or was he already dead as suggested by the post mortem…?
Murder in the Cards is the second book to feature the SeeMs detectives Cat, Stevie and Miranda (I have previously reviewed the first book in the series The Mystery of the Lost Husbands).
The plot strongly involves the card game of bridge so a lot of it went over my head! Some of the chapters are set in the 1960s and show bridge players at seedy clubs with dishonest intentions. There is also a link to a murder in the 1920s involving bridge as well.
The 2020 lockdown is depicted authentically and the characters’ lives and the investigation are affected by the laws of the time. There are twists as the women look into Brian’s family history and discover links with crimes and deaths in the past.
I liked the main three female characters, the way they interact and track down clues. Their personalities and past were firmly established in the first book but there is enough information to bring them to life if you haven’t read that.
Murder in the Cards is an intriguing mystery but I felt overwhelmed by the bridge details.
Murder in the Cards
Death is the rule, survival the exception in 1960s Soho bridge circles
When the SeeMs Agency detectives play bridge online in 2020, they don’t expect their opponent to die during the game and yet a post-mortem the next day proves Brian Deliverer was dead halfway through the night. Can a dead man play bridge?
Employed by Brian’s daughter Karen to investigate his death, the team are led back to a notorious 1920s murder and to a missing teenager from a Sussex village in the 1960s.
Should they tell his daughter the terrible truth behind her father’s death even if it costs her everything?
Gina has worked as a physiotherapist, a pilot, freelance writer and a dog breeder.
As a child, Gina’s parents hated travelling and never went further than Jersey. As a result she became travel-addicted and spent the year after university bumming around SE Asia, China and Australia, where she worked in a racing stables in Pinjarra, South of Perth. After getting stuck in black sand in the Ute one time too many (and getting a tractor and trailer caught in a tree) she was relegated to horse-riding work only. After her horse bolted down the sand, straining a fetlock and falling in the sea, she was further relegated to swimming the horses only in the pool. It was with some relief the racehorse stables posted her off on the train into eastern Australia to work in a vineyard… after all what could go wrong there?
In the north of Thailand, she took a boat into the Golden Triangle and got shot at by bandits. Her group escaped into the undergrowth and hid in a hill tribe whisky still where they shared the ‘bathroom’ with a group of pigs. Getting a lift on a motorbike they hurried back to Chiang Rai, where life seemed calmer.
After nearly being downed in a fiesta in Ko Pha Ngan, and cursed by a witch in Malaysia, she decided to go to Singapore and then to China where she only had to battle with the language and regulations.
Since marrying the first time, she has lived and worked in many countries including Spain and the USA.
For a few years Gina was a Wingwalking pilot, flying, amongst others, her 64-year-old mother standing on the wing to raise money for a cancer charity. She was also a helicopter instructor and examiner and took part in the World Helicopter Championships in Russia and the USA.
She became a writer because her first love was always telling a good yarn!
Under the name Georgina Hunter-Jones she has written illustrated children’s books such as The Twerple who had Too Many Brains, and Nola the Rhinoceros loves Mathematics.
She now lives in Sussex with her husband and dogs, one of who inspired the Biscuit and Pugwash Detective Series about naughty dogs who solve crimes.
Murder in the Cards is the second in the SeeMS Detective Agency series
