This is a review of the four-book Jacqueline Kirby mystery series by Elizabeth Peters (The Seventh Sinner, The Murders of Richard III, Die for Love, and Naked Once More). I started them after really enjoying her Amelia Peabody, Egyptologist, mystery series. I found them not as entertaining nor as well-developed as the Peabody series. Jacqueline Kirby is a “woman of a certain age,” with two children and a once-upon-a-time husband about whom nothing is ever learned, and is clearly a liberated woman. She almost inadvertently gets involved in various mysteries. In the first, she’s literally run into by students of art history and dragged into their world of crypts and hidden churches; from there, one of the students is murdered. In Richard III, someone reenacts the murders of King Richard III while at house party assembled to announce the discovery of a missing document regarding Richard. These both felt a tad dry to me. I enjoyed #3, Die for Love. It is set at a conference for romance writers and is quite witty and funny. I also enjoyed #4, Naked Once More, which describes Kirby’s attempts to write a sequel to a best-selling novel when the author of the original has disappeared. Overall, I found Kirby to not be as likable a character as Peabody nor the mysteries as entertaining.
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The Jacqueline Kirby Mystery Series is available through Amazon.
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You can find my reviews of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series here and her Vicky Bliss series here.
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