Kate Hamilton Series: Book 5
Publication Date: June 18, 2024
In USA Today bestselling author Connie Berry’s fifth Kate Hamilton mystery, American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton follows bloodstained clues to discover the truth about the murder of a modern-day Victorian gentleman.
As Kate Hamilton and her new husband, DI Tom Mallory, honeymoon in Devon, a local history museum asks them to trace the provenance of a bloodstained dress said to belong to a Victorian lacemaker accused of murder. If genuine, the dress and its puzzling connections to a nineteenth-century Romani family who camped on Dartmoor will be the centerpiece of a new historic crimes exhibit—exactly Kate’s kind of mystery. But matters turn deadly when a shot is fired during a fundraising gala, injuring the man who donated the dress.
The injured donor, Gideon Littlejohn, is a cybersecurity expert who lives and dresses as a Victorian gentleman, but everyone believes the real target of the attack to be another attendee—a controversial politician intent on rooting out local corruption. This belief is overturned when Gideon is found dead in a pool of blood. But then the politician receives a death threat.
Who was the real target? Who would want to kill both a man with an obsession for history and a tough-on-crime politician? When asked to assist in the investigation, Kate races to discover the truth, as it becomes clear the killer isn’t going to come quietly.
Kate Hamilton should be enjoying her honeymoon with her new husband, Tom Mallory. But there is no rest for the wicked. Asked to trace the provenance of a bloodstained dress believed to have belonged to an accused murderer, their honeymoon becomes an investigation that gets more dangerous the more they dig in with A Collection of Lies by Connie Berry.
Kate Hamilton arrived in Devon not only to enjoy her honeymoon with her husband, Tom Mallory but also to discover the true history of a dress donated to the local museum. Kate is drawn to this dress, feeling an overwhelming emotional connection she cannot explain. But the dress is not the only mystery when a local eccentric and Victorian enthusiast is found dead. Tom is brought on to consult with the local police department while Kate digs into the murder while also discovering the murky history of the bloodstained dress. However, with their suspect list growing by the day, finding the killer is harder than it seems, and everything seems to link back to this mysterious dress. Will Kate and Tom get to the bottom of the mystery before it is too late?
A Collection of Lies is my first foray into a Kate Hamilton Mystery book, and I was highly impressed by how quickly I connected with these characters. While I would have liked to learn more about these characters from previous books, I didn’t feel I was missing too much. The book truly could stand alone, and it quickly hooked me on the series. Kate and Tom had such a great connection, not only romantically but also professionally. They were seamless in their investigation, and I also loved how the local police were shown as competent professionals rather than dunces, which some mysteries can portray. I loved the connection between a historical mystery and a contemporary mystery. I felt like Berry gave enough information through the investigation that if you were paying close attention, you could guess the ending, but it also kept you guessing.
A Collection of Lies bridges history and mystery seamlessly. Consider this reviewer a new fan of Kate Hamilton.
Connie Berry is the author of the Kate Hamilton mysteries, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Like her protagonist, Connie was raised by antiques dealers who instilled in her a passion for history, fine art, and travel. During college she studied at the University of Freiburg in Germany and St. Clare’s College, Oxford, where she fell under the spell of the British Isles. In 2019 Connie won the IPPY Gold Medal for Mystery and was a finalist for the Agatha Award’s Best Debut. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and is on the board of the Guppies and her local Sisters in Crime chapter. Besides reading and writing mysteries, Connie loves history, foreign travel, cute animals, and all things British. She lives in Ohio with her husband and adorable Shih Tzu, Emmie.
