Review: Visiting the 1940s
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 14, 2014
I downloaded a free copy of The Dagger Before Me from Amazon. In exchange, I offer this, my fair and honest review.The Dagger Before Me is one of stories in The Persephone Cole Vintage Mystery Series.  (Note the terrific covers. I mean really, who doesn’t love a great fedora!) In it, Heather Haven introduces us to Persephone Cole, known as Percy. Percy is trying to find her way the “man’s world” of the 1940s. Living with her parents and son, she seeks to take over the family investigation business, while keeping it a secret from her Pop.I found Percy engaging. I liked her moxie. Not exactly feminine, people “often remarked that between her wild hair, thin body, and daffy personality, she reminded them of a Dandelion caught in a windstorm.” (I like that word-picture.)  Percy does things like:  “she popped a nut into her mouth and separated the meat from the shell with her teeth.” Haven offers delightful and “punny” prose: “What color the interior was supposed to be was difficult to say. I’m going with drab.” Or how about this one—when Percy looks up at a man, we read: “It was novel, looking up to someone not standing on a stepladder.”Most notable, Haven seems to have caught the real-life feel of the 1940s with things such as the manner in which people react to Percy, a reference to someone having a “Dick Tracy jaw,” and with Percy’s introspections (“Percy had seen something like that worn by Fred Astaire in a movie once.”). All in all, these features rang true and made for a fun—and different—read.