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    Dying in the Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery
    Unavailable
    Dying in the Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery
    Unavailable
    Dying in the Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery
    Audiobook10 hours

    Dying in the Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

    Written by Frances Brody

    Narrated by Nicola Barber

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happensµ Until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing in dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again. Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants one last attempt at finding her father. Has he run off with his mistress, or was he murdered for his mounting coffers? Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance? But as Kate taps into the lives of the Bridgestead dwellers, she opens cracks that some would kill to keep closed...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateFeb 14, 2012
    ISBN9781611206296
    Unavailable
    Dying in the Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery
    Author

    Frances Brody

    Frances Brody is a pseudonym for Frances McNeil, the scriptwriter, playwright, and author of four novels and the winner of the Elizabeth Elgin Award. Her stage plays have been toured by several theatre companies, and Jehad was nominated for a Time Out Award.

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    Reviews for Dying in the Wool

    3.5/5

    141 ratings19 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The first in the series and Kate’s first professional for-pay case. A successful mill owner in Yorkshire and 5 years later his daughter asks Kate to find him. Interesting, well developed setting, and good plot development.
    • 2/5
      I was attracted by the setting of Yorkshire textile mills in 1922 with a war widow taking up a new career as a private detective after some success as an amateur, however, it turned out to be disappointing. There was some interesting information about the textile industry and the time frame was well done but the characters were flat and uninspired, the sleuthing was tedious, and the plot far-fetched. Skip this one.
    • 4/5
      I love the time setting but maybe I just wasn't in the mood for the feisty female playing against society's expectations. So many of them lately.
    • 3/5
      irca 1919: Kate Shakelton, former VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse has been working for free helping friends, friends of friends, friends of family et. al. solve mysteries & find missing loved ones.Her former VAD friend, Tabitha Braithwaite, is soon to wed and has hired Kate to find her father before the wedding.Joshua Braithwaite, owner of a large textile plant, was last seen running away from the local hospital, where he was remanded for the crime of "allegedly" trying to commit suicide.There are a few people who do not want him found, there are a few who might stand to profit from his disappearance, there are a few who stand to lose if he is found (alive)....The family all have their motives, as do a few of the mill workers.....I found this to be not only an interesting story & mystery but also the information on mills, textiles, weaving & dye making was informative.
    • 5/5
      I picked this up not expecting too much, so I was quite surprised. 1920s British mysteries with feisty young female heroines seems to be quite a popular genre lately and I've enjoyed a few. Brody, however, manages to stand out from the crowd with more sophisticated narrative technique (sections viewed through various characters' viewpoints), keeping the "period details" to a minimum and constructing a plausible and interesting mystery. Definitely the best of the type that I've read so far.
    • 3/5
      Kate Shackleton is asked by Tabitha Brathwaite, a friend from her VAD days, to find her father who has been missing since the days of the war. He owned a textile mill but had been accused of attempting suicide. He made an escape from the hospital where he was being held until his court date. Tabitha's mother appeared to be waiting for his death declaration after a seven year absence. Tabitha wanted her father present at her wedding. Kate investigates. Some reviewers liken this series to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series. The main similarity is both series feature female British protagonists involved in nursing during World War I who become detectives. I felt the main character was underdeveloped, and I never connected with any of the characters. Kate's assistant Sykes,recommended to her by her father, may be the most interesting character, but the author marginalized him. I found myself wishing Sykes were the detective for the series. His background seems to be more suitable to detecting. I doubt I'll continue the series.
    • 4/5
      A very good cozy mystery and well-researched story. The widowed heroine, is bright, clever and talented and just entering her thirties. It's 1922 but the war years still loom large over the lives of the survivors. But before some can move on, unanswered questions must be resolved. It is up to Kate Shackleton, our heroine, to assist others in providing that forward-moving nudge. Synopsis: Take one quiet Yorkshire village, Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happens.Add a measure of mystery ...Until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing in dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again.A sprinkling of scandal ...Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants one last attempt at finding her father. Has he run off with his mistress, or was he murdered for his mounting coffers?And Kate Shackleton, amateur sleuth extraordinaire!Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance? But as Kate taps into the lives of the Bridgestead dwellers, she opens cracks that some would kill to keep closed.
    • 4/5
      Dying in the Wool
      3.5 Stars

      In the aftermath of the Great War, Kate Shackleton is coping with the loss of her own husband by helping those whose loved ones have disappeared during the conflict. When an acquaintance for her days in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) asks for help in locating her missing father, a successful mill owner, Kate takes on the case. But not everyone is as eager for Kate to dig into the lives and secrets of the small Yorkshire village of Bridgestead, and she might just have bitten off more than she can chew.

      An interesting cozy mystery with a likeable heroine, and the author captures the nuances of the changing social norms following WWI very well.

      Kate is an appealing heroine mainly due to the fact that she epitomizes the type of woman who was no longer willing to stay home and play hostess once the war ended. She is independent, self-sufficient and determined to make a place for herself in the world.

      The twists and turns in the investigation into Joshua Braithwaite's disappearance are intriguing, but the pacing is rather slow and Kate often seems to be running around in circles.

      Nicola Barber's narration of the audiobook is engaging. She has an excellent range of accents and is skilled at both the male and female voices.

      Overall, a solid historical mystery with well-developed characters. However, as someone who prefers a bit of romance with her suspense, the lack of a love interest for Kate is disappointing and it is unlikely that I will continue with the series.
    • 4/5
      A good murder mystery. Excellent attention to period detail and the problems of post WW1.
    • 4/5
      I didn’t know what I was going to get with this mystery. I’m on a break for holidays with both work and school and have been mostly reading lighter fiction. From the book cover one may assume that this would be a cute and cozy mystery but i was pleasantly surprised to see that it was cozy yes, yet still very cerebral. I look forward to reading more in the series.
    • 3/5
      I really thought this was just an okay book. The heroine Kate Shackleton is rather cold and stiff. She’s asked by a former VAD that she knew from WWI to find her missing father since she’s about to be married and really wants him at the ceremony. Kate goes to stay with the family and finds everyone very unhelpful in solving what happened to the wealthy mill owner. Of course, in this type of investigation secrets come out and people get hurt (murdered) to try and keep the facts hidden.
    • 4/5
      This is a delightful mystery with sleuth Kate Shackleton. I do wish that I would have had a little dictionary to help me translate some of the UK English as I feel I missed some of the delights of the writing by Frances Brody.
    • 4/5
      Kate Shackleton is a 30-something war “widow” -- World War I. She’s a natural born sleuth, plying her trade as an amateur until a friends hires her. The friend, Tabitha Braithwaite, was a fellow volunteer in the Volunteer Aid Detachment during the war. She’s getting married in a short while, and she wants Kate to locate her missing father. It appears Joshua Braithwaite disappeared some years ago after he was found thrashing about and incoherent in a local beck, saved by Boy Scouts and detained for an attempted suicide. Neither his wife Evelyn or Tabitha believes he was suicidal. But he DID escape from confinement in a psychiatric hospital and has not been seen since. Tabitha’s father was the owner of a woolen mill now run by Evelyn, Tabitha and a cousin of Joshua’s, Neville Stoddard. Soon after Kate begins her inquiries, two local people are murdered. Could those crimes be tied to the earlier disappearance? The more Kate learns, the more she believes that Joshua Braithwaite is certainly dead, and there are secrets that Tabitha may want kept secret.This series is compared, of course, to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs books. Although they are set in roughly the same time period and with female protagonists, there are many differences between the two. Maisie Dobbs as a characters had a rich backstory, much of which was revealed in the first book of the series. In Dying in the Wool, readers do not know enough about Kate to have an instant connection; her past is much murkier … and she is instantly propelled into her first case with little mention of her previous cases – amateurish as they may have been. I would call Kate Shackleton “Maisie Dobbs Lite.”
    • 2/5
      Missing a missing-presumed-dead husband doesn't give this harmless little mystery series any resonance or connection with the war. Stop comparing her to Jacqueline Winspear.
    • 3/5
      Kate Shackleton is a woman in her thirties who persists in believing that her husband Gerald is still alive but MIA from WWI. Everybody else considers her a widow. She has spent quite a bit of time searching for him in vain but she did acquire the skills necessary to find people. Many others have been rewarded when she found relatives of theirs also MIA.

      Kate takes on a case of a missing father for a friend who was also in the VAD, (Volunteer Aid). In other words yet another plucky ambulance driver alá Maisie Dobbs, Jade DeCameron and Phryne Fisher from the pages of other mystery writers who have plucky heroine ex-ambulance drivers as protagonists.

      In this case the missing man was not in the armed services, rather he took a tumble, hit his head and everyone stupidly decided he was suicidal so he ran away. The story is more interesting than it sounds but it takes until the last sixth of the book to spark your interest. There are a few gimmeabreak moments in the exposition of this mystery and you can't quite feel any sympathy for the girl who is missing her father, or for the father for that matter.

      The depiction of the times was good and the description of the area was nice but it suffers in comparison just a bit with similar protagonists.

      I may read the next in the series to see if it gets any stronger.
    • 4/5
      Kate Shackleton, a not-quite war widow, her husband is listed as missing and she can’t quite accept that he’s dead, possibly because she’s also helped some of the families of other soldiers listed as missing track them down, and is aware that some men have used the chaos of war to enable them to walk away from their lives. Kate’s VAD friend, Tabby, is getting married and wants to find out just what happened to her father, a wealthy mill-owner who disappeared in 1916. Full of period atmosphere I hoped I enjoy this book more than I did, but this may be a series that takes a couple of books to really get going.
    • 3/5
      First Line: My name's Kate Shackleton.Normally a peaceful Yorkshire mill town, the only exceptional thing to have happened in Bridgestead is when mill owner Joshua Braithwaite went missing and was never heard from again. Now Braithwaite's daughter Tabitha is getting married, and she wants to try one last time to find her father.She turns to Kate Shackleton, a friend since their Voluntary Aid Detachment days during World War I. Kate's husband was listed as missing in action/ presumed dead during the war, and since the Armistice, she has been having a bit of success finding missing husbands for local women. But once Kate turns her skill to the puzzle of the missing mill owner, she discovers that someone is willing to kill to keep the secret.This first book in the Kate Shackleton series takes place during the 1920s in the Bradford and Leeds area of Yorkshire. This area was the heart of the cloth trade in England, and I loved the fact that each chapter began with a textile term. I had no idea that so many words and phrases from the manufacture of cloth had made their way into everyday speech.Kate Shackleton is young and independent, thinks nothing of driving herself anywhere she wants to go, and asking questions wherever she thinks they should be asked. Being advised that she needs help with some of her investigative work, Kate hires former policeman Jim Sykes, and it's fun to watch the two of them get used to working with each other; Kate not being used to having an employee, and Jim not used to such a Modern Woman. The person suggesting that Kate get help was wise because this case developed into a very complicated one that kept me guessing at every twist and turn.I really liked the time period, the setting, and the plot of Dying in the Wool, but the characters didn't quite come to life as I'd hoped they would. Kate, Jim and Tabitha seemed to have extra measures of British reserve that kept me at a distance the entire time I was reading. Even so, this is a good, solid mystery, and I will be visiting Kate Shackleton again to see if she's warmed up to visitors.
    • 4/5
      Kate Shakleton's husband is missing presumed dead from World War I and she's part of the surplus women. In some denial about the loss of her husband she started investigating other missing men. Now a former acquaintance from the VAD wants her help to find her father, Tabitha Braithwaite is getting married soon and wants her father to walk her up the aisle. Her father owned a mill and disappeared after an apparent suicide attempt. When Kate starts investigating she finds a lot of skeletons in the cupboard and things aren't straightforward. She also finds assistance in Jim Sykes, a former policeman.Overall it's an interesting story, I'm not sure that the flashbacks quite work but as a first book in a series it does make me want to read more in this series, I'm fond of books set in this period and what to see what happens next. The resolution of the story wasn't completely satisfactory but it wasn't bad.
    • 5/5
      Excellent 1920s murder mystery, set in my neck of the woods. Guilty of judging the book by its cover, I was tempted to read this while processing a reference copy ('local author') for the library where I work. The quaint illustration by Helen Chapman really says it all - mill town, rural setting, figure in a cloche hat snapping a picture - and the story itself does not disappoint.The year is 1922, and Kate Shackleton is one of the 'surplus women' widowed by the Great War, an all too common heartache for a generation of lonely women left behind when their loved ones were killed on the battlefield. Of course, this also means that Kate is now an independent woman living comfortably by herself, although she hasn't quite given up the ghost of her surgeon husband, who has the intelligence and initiative to put her spare time to use helping others. After a couple of 'amateur' investigations helping to trace missing people for friends, Kate receives her first paying case - find the father of a wartime acquaintance. Joshua Braitwaite, wealthy mill owner from 'Worstedopolis' (the area around Bradford and Leeds), disappeared from home in 1916, after apparently attempting to commit suicide. Now his daughter wants answers - is he still alive, and if so, why did he leave? Or did he suceed in taking his own life, broken over the death of his son in France? Kate sets to work, finding skeletons in the Braithwaite closet.I really enjoyed this mystery, not least the local history, and can't wait to read Brody's next Kate Shackleton novel. Kate has all the markings of a famous literary detective - connections, curiosity and a sidekick - but she is also a winsome and amusing narrator, at times vulnerable and motivated by her own loss, but always honest and determined. The era is also perfect, allowing a measure of independence for women emboldened by war work and forced to survive on their wits, yet still unwelcome in a man's world of crime investigation. Kate even has her own car, which is shocking in itself! Frances Brody gets the time and place just right, flavouring a neat mystery with historical detail and Yorkshire humour.