Superfluous Women

My new book comes out today, June 9^th. Superfluous Women is the 22^nd Daisy Dalrymple mystery, my 25^th mystery, and my 57^th book (not counting four collections of novellas).


The surplus or superfluous women of the title, so labelled by the press, are the excess of women over men in Britain after the First World War. About 700,000 men were killed in the war, and countless others disabled. Young women who had been brought up expecting to dedicate their lives to husband and family had to face the fact that for many this was an unattainable goal. Some of the ways they coped are described in their own words in Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out, a fascinating book that inspired mine.

One of Daisy’s school friends has set up house with two others in the same situation, in a small town near London. Daisy and her husband, DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, visiting the town, are invited to Sunday lunch. Intrigued by mention of a locked cellar with a missing key, Alec picks the lock and finds a putrefying body.

Alec is not happy to have his weekend off ruined. The local police are not happy to have a Scotland Yard detective as chief witness. Daisy is not happy that her friends star as chief suspects. Clearly something must be done, and Daisy is the one to do it.

Superfluous Women had great reviews in PW, Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal. The one I like best, from Library Journal: “The 22^nd entry...proves that Dunn just keeps getting better.” Can’t beat that!

So much for June. I was almost more excited in March, when the very first Daisy book, Death at Wentwater Court, was reissued by Minotaur in trade paperback 20 years after first publication. It has brand new art by Bradley Clark, who has done my covers since the 12^th in the series, Die Laughing. It’s been out of print in the US for some time (though available elsewhere and in e-book) and it’s great to know they have enough faith in the series to start again from the beginning. The second will follow in March 2016.

And to cap off the first half of this year, in May the trade paperback of my most recent Daisy mystery, Heirs of the Body) (hardcover 2013), came out. It has perhaps my very favourite cover and, of course, a wonderful story!

Carola Dunn is author of the Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, Cornish Mysteries, and multitudinous Regencies.