The Bottom Line: âA highly engaging World War II mystery with a remarkable amateur sleuth at the helm.â â BestThrillers.com
Set during World War II, D for Daisy begins as the eponymously named British bomber returns to base. The landing is a harrowing one, as the planeâs pilot, Ralph Prendergast, is dead on arrival. Itâs up to the flight engineer to take the controls while the rest of the crew hangs on for dear life.
Ralphâs 21-year-old wife, Daisy, has seemingly been prepared for each of her husbandâs missions to be his last. As such, sheâs remarkably composed when told of Ralphâs passing. Initially, she assumes heâs been killed by a stray bullet or piece of flak. But in the emotional scene where Daisy, who is blind, feels his corpse, she discovers that her husband has no external wounds.
Daisyâs demand for an autopsy is denied. But after collecting Ralphâs suitcase, she discovers the flask he had taken with him on his last mission and takes it to a pharmacist for analysis. Arsenic is discovered in the sample, which is all the evidence Daisy needs to set about attempting to solve her husbandâs murder.
In Daisy, author Nick Aaron has created a remarkable amateur sleuth. At times, her formidable powers of deduction seem to be enhanced by her blindness, and she is somehow more observant than her peers when it comes to her insight into human psychology and motive. Daisyâs own telling of her experience throughout (âDo you realise that I have no way of picturing how gold or crystal glitters?â) make her all the more sympathetic. In a moment of meta-awareness shortly after inspecting her husbandâs body, she declares, âletâs see, what would you have to do as an amateur sleuth?â As sleuths go, sheâs also remarkably patient. Once she determines who has murdered her husband, sheâs content to wait until just the right moment to attempt to pounceâeven if justice will be years in the making.
The novelâs strengths lie in how well Aaron draws Daisyâs character, the tantalizing mystery of Ralph's death and an unsettling romantic suspense that carries the plot forward. Aaronâs prose is primarily driven by dialogue and exposition rather than evocative description, which makes this first entry in Aaronâs Blind Sleuth series a quick read that can easily be devoured over a weekend. Fans of World War II period fiction will relish the unconventional chess match between Daisy and her husbandâs killer, which simmers throughout the narrative until its satisfying conclusion. (BestThrillers review)
Nick Aaron is Dutch, but he was born in South Africa (1956), where he attended a British-style boarding school, in Pietersburg, Transvaal. Later he lived in Lausanne (Switzerland), in Rotterdam, Luxembourg and Belgium. He worked for the European Parliament as a printer and proofreader. Currently he's retired and lives in Malines.
Recently, after writing in Dutch and French for many years, the author went back to the language of his mid-century South African childhood. A potential global readership was the incentive; the trigger was the character of Daisy Hayes, who asserted herself in his mind wholly formed.
Check out Nick's author page at www.nickaaronauthor.com