No Life For A Lady by Hannah Dolby

 

Lily Hamilton left her home one evening to attend a soiree and never returned. Ten years later her daughter Violet, now twenty-eight, does the most unladylike thing and hires a detective to try and find out what happened to her mother.

I had seen quite a lot of chatter on Twitter regarding How To Solve Murders Like A Lady by Hannah Dolby in the run-up to its publication date. I liked what I was hearing about the style of the writing and was very pleased to learn it was a sequel to No Life For A Lady, so I decided to read the first book in the series. It certainly won't be long before I delve into the recently published sequel.

The heroine of No Life For A Lady is twenty-eight-year-old Violet Hamilton who lives with her father in Hastings. Violet's father is desperate to marry her off, I thought it was hilarious that she is considered an elderly spinster. Violet, however, is determined to never marry and goes out of her way to put off the possible suitors her father finds. Much of Violet's reluctance to marry comes from a talk her mother gave her at the age of eighteen regarding "marital relations". To help visual, Violet was told to seek out pictures of a turkey's head and a stinkhorn mushroom!

The humour in the rest of the book follows in the same vein, making for an entertaining read as we discover that Violet is extremely independent. Alongside her unwillingness to marry, Violet also has ambitions to work, although she's not entirely sure what kind of work she could do. Hiring a detective to find out what happened to her mother doesn't quite go to plan and Violet finds herself in a number of precarious situations. Violet begins to wonder if she could be a Lady Detective.

Violet finds herself in many scandalous situations, all of which are extremely tame by modern standards. There are a lot of references to sex and the disparity between the sexes is shocking. It was unbelievably easy for a lady to lose her standing in society and Violet pushed every boundary and glass ceiling possible.

As the truth about Lily Hamilton's disappearance is revealed the story does take on a slightly darker tone but this is balanced by the strides Violet makes in both her personal and professional life. 

Author Details

Hannah Dolby's first job was in the circus and she has aimed to keep life as interesting since. She trained as a journalist in Hastings and has worked in PR for many years, promoting museums, galleries, palaces, gardens and even Dolly the sheep. She completed the Curtis Brown selective three-month novel writing course, and she won runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Awards for this novel with the prize of a place on an MA in Comedy Writing at the University of Falmouth. She currently lives in London.