I just finished reading this book, the final one in the Diana Spaulding series, so this review is really about the series in toto. The four books were Deadlier than the Pen, Fatal as a Fallen Woman, No Mortal Reason, and Lethal Legend. The characters were engaging, the mysteries interesting, and there was humor and romance. Although the stories included 'adult themes' there was nothing graphic or explicit.
Diana is a young widow, forced to earn a living as a reporter for a somewhat disreputable newspaper in 1888 New York City. The four stories cover a four-month period in that year, and settings range from NYC to upper NY state, Maine, and the wild west of Colorado. The secondary characters include both of the equally odd and hilarious mothers of Diana and her love interest (whom she meets in book one), their extended families and others that are as well-written as the H&H, eccentric and entertaining. In the final book, the hints and implications about one of the minor secondary characters are simply hilarious.
The author, Kathy Lynn Emerson, also wrote a series set in Elizabethan England, and in the final Diana Spaulding book, we discover ... MINOR SPOILER....
that Diana's ancestor is a character in that series (so I want to read it now, too). Kathy Lynn Emerson also writes historical fiction as Kate Emerson and contemporary mysteries as Kaitlyn Dunnett.
Diana is a young widow, forced to earn a living as a reporter for a somewhat disreputable newspaper in 1888 New York City. The four stories cover a four-month period in that year, and settings range from NYC to upper NY state, Maine, and the wild west of Colorado. The secondary characters include both of the equally odd and hilarious mothers of Diana and her love interest (whom she meets in book one), their extended families and others that are as well-written as the H&H, eccentric and entertaining. In the final book, the hints and implications about one of the minor secondary characters are simply hilarious.
The author, Kathy Lynn Emerson, also wrote a series set in Elizabethan England, and in the final Diana Spaulding book, we discover ... MINOR SPOILER....
that Diana's ancestor is a character in that series (so I want to read it now, too). Kathy Lynn Emerson also writes historical fiction as Kate Emerson and contemporary mysteries as Kaitlyn Dunnett.
