A Shilling for Candles by Josephine TeyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The second Grant novel improves on the first substantially, in my view, making less use of coincidence and having the detective actually solve the mystery this time instead of getting a spontaneous confession from someone who wasn't previously a suspect.
The victim is a film star who's risen from a poor background in Nottingham by determination and perseverance, and perhaps ruffled some feathers along the way. The title refers to her bequest to her brother, a religious charlatan and one of the numerous suspects.
It's a solid investigation plot, but the characters and their interactions are what really makes it, like most of the best detective fiction.
The HarperCollins edition has fewer errors than theirs often do (and significantly fewer than their edition of the first book in the series), though I suspect that's more likely because the original book was printed more clearly and produced fewer scan errors than because they put extra effort into editing it.
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