Arsenic at Ascot
Fiona Figg Mystery #7
by Kelly Oliver
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
I’d learned the best way to defuse a cocky man was to ask his advice.
I glanced into a full-length mirror next to the clothes rack. The face I saw looking back at me was the spitting image of my Uncle Frank. Features a tad too strong to be considered feminine. It was going to take more than a Harrod’s gown to turn me into a passable lady.
A smile played on my lips. Forget about provisions and housework. I was a proper British Intelligence agent about to embark on a top-secret espionage mission for the War Office. My chest expanded to the point of bursting a button off my blouse.
My Review:
This well-plotted and humorous cozy mystery was quite the head-scratcher, I didn’t have it anywhere worked out and am still up in the air about the trustworthiness of several characters, I guess spies are like that. The situations were unique and well-contrived with clues that prickled my curiosity and tickled my gray matter. Kelly Oliver is a master storyteller and paints colorful pictures with her well-chosen words.
Kelly Oliver grew up in the Northwest, Montana, Idaho, and Washington states. Her maternal grandfather was a forest ranger committed to saving the trees, and her paternal grandfather was a logger hell-bent on cutting them down. On both sides, her ancestors were some of the first settlers in Northern Idaho. In her own unlikely story, Kelly went from eating a steady diet of wild game shot by her dad to becoming a vegetarian while studying philosophy and pondering animal minds. Competing with peers who’d come from private schools and posh families “back East,” Kelly’s working-class backwoods grit has served her well. And much to her parent’s surprise, she’s managed to feed and clothe herself as a professional philosopher.
When she’s not writing mysteries, Kelly Oliver is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She earned her B.A. from Gonzaga University and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She is the author of thirteen scholarly books, ten anthologies, and over 100 articles, including work on campus rape, reproductive technologies, women and the media, film noir, and Alfred Hitchcock. Her work has been translated into seven languages, and she has published an op-ed on loving our pets in The New York Times. She has been interviewed on ABC television news, the Canadian Broadcasting Network, and various radio programs.
Kelly lives in Nashville with her husband, Benigno Trigo, and her furry family, Mischief and Mayhem.
