An Easy Day for a Lady

Nell Bray #4

by Gillian Linscott

"An easy day for a lady" is a phrase well known to Nell Bray, a suffragette with a knack for landing in the middle of murder mysteries. The saying, notorious among mountain climbers, denotes something so effortless it's not worth doing. Where Nell is concerned, things are rarely that simple - and her unexpected visit to the French Alps proves no exception.
An outraged Nell heads to Chamonix after Britain's House of Commons smothers a bill that would at last have given women the vote. She's hoping that a climbing holiday will clear her head - and calm the temper that once landed the suffragette in prison for throwing a brick through the window of No. 10 Downing Street.
But rest and relaxation are not to be On her second day at Mont Blanc, Nell spots a French rescue team chipping a body out of the ice. "If a man dies up there and his body is not recovered, it must come down the glacier in the course of time," a guide tells her. "It may take thirty years, even forty, but down he must come sooner or later." "Come down" he has.
The corpse is identified as belonging to Englishman Arthur Mordiford, who disappeared three decades earlier, and the bilingual Nell is recruited as an interpreter for his British family. But when Mordiford's death begins to look as if it might not have been accidental, more than Nell's language skills are called into play, as the irrepressible sleuth cannot resist yet another case.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

Hardcover

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Gillian Linscott introduced her popular suffragette/sleuth, Nell Bray, in the critically acclaimed Sister Beneath the Sheet. A BBC reporter turned full-time writer, she lives in Herefordshire, England.

Linscott has also published several titles under the pseudonym Caro Peacock.

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm no sure if this was ACTUALLY a five star book or if I just feel that way about it because it was exactly what I wanted to be reading right now. Set in Chamonix 1910, a cold-case (literally) and a "suffragette sleuthess" gets caught up in the past and present to unravel a good puzzle of a mystery. A range of characters that I really enjoyed and a nuanced aromantic feminism.

Agatha Christie without the problematic aspects. Every time I picked this book up I just wanted to keep reading it instead of going out to parties or whatever (so I read it on the bus).

I'm going to make sure to read more of the Nell Bray mysteries.

[Jane Gabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is really tops. Takes you right into the heyday of the suffrage movement. Nell Bray is the suffrage/detective, and she is a strong and thoughtful protagonist. A good read, and historically accurate!

[Kirsty Darbyshire]

Nell Bray gets out of London and away to the Alps where she ends up tangled up with a family who have come to fetch the body of an English climber killed a couple of decades before. It was good to see Nell in a not especially suffragette like setting and I was glad to see Linscott bringing Nell's translation skills, which have sat in the background in most of the other books, to the fore.

[Earthwatchaddict · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun little mystery. Very quick read. The main character is a suffragette in the early 1900's. She is a very easy character to root for.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had completely forgotten this series which I had read before and found it well written and a good story.

[Austen to Zafón · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit twee and chirpy, but largely enjoyable if you love the era and place.