When society glamour girl Hero “Hurry” Lynn is found dead, strangled with a million-dollar necklace, at an exclusive charity fundraiser in a Manhattan penthouse, it looks like suicide to just about everyone, except the Beagle Sisters, whose private detective agency has been hired to safeguard the jewels. Homicide Inspector Moore thinks it’s murder as well and he isn’t averse to letting the two sixty-something sleuths do a little investigating on their own, having observed them solve the mystery of the headless corpse in a theatrical rooming house in their first murder case. Amanda Beagle, the older of the two sisters, is all business and runs the agency, inherited from their late brother, with an iron hand while sister Lutie, who learned her craft from reading thrillers at the East Biddicutt Public Library, does most of the actual sleuthing. Only five feet tall, her quaint appearance conceals a shrewd mind, her purse a pearl-handled revolver. She’s one of the memorable sleuths in the history of the genre, whose exploits were deemed “delightful” by the New York Times and “charming” by the Boston Transcript.

Our Second Murder, originally published in 1941, is a fair-play detective story as well as a charming hybrid of the private eye and cozy mystery, filled with timetables, a crime scene drawing, and more than a few red herrings. Like Our First Murder, it’s also a marvelous portrait of New York City on the eve of World War II, from its flashy high society watering holes to its distinctive architecture, by a woman who earned two Caldecott nominations for her illustrations of children’s books (she also did the cover art for both of her Beagle Sisters mysteries.)

Reviews

“This is a can’t-stop-reading novel that will make the reader smile and cheer up on dark days. Highly recommended.”
—I Love a Mystery

“This is sadly the last of the Beagle Sister mysteries.  It is just as charming as the first one, with a gentler, kinder look at society.”
—Deadly Pleasures

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