Meet Misty Divine – your favourite new amateur sleuth!

Drag isn’t just dramatic. It’s deadly…

By day, shy hotel accountant Joe hides behind their desk and plays by the rules.

By night, Joe takes to the stage as Misty Divine, an upcoming star of the London drag scene.

But when Misty’s mentor, Lady Lady, is found dead in her dressing room, Misty finds herself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Because Lady Lady was murdered – and as the only ones with access to her room, Misty and her fellow performers quickly become prime suspects.

Heartbroken by the loss, and frustrated by the inaction of the police, Joe is determined to uncover the killer in their midst.

But what can they, a mere hotel accountant, possibly do?

This is a case for Misty Divine…

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for provided me with a free review copy of this book.

Misty \devine is a London based drag artist, working in the best drag club in Soho – Lady’s – Lady Lady famous TV drag Queen is Misty’s mentor, she set up the club after falling out with her TV partner Auntie Susan and no promotes established and upcoming Drag artists.

But now she is dead, murdered, poisoned to be precise and MIsty is the one who finds her and therefore is the police’s number one suspect, however the police are more interested in the dress that Lady was wearing when she was murderd, it was stolen from a local vintage shop and was previously owned by Judy Garland. Misty upset that the police don’t seem interested decides to investigate herself and the killer is closer to home than she suspects.

I love a good cosy mystery and this one was right up my alley, the characters a brilliantly written and very human and therefore believble.

Misty/Joe as wonderfully created character and the author shows respect to non-binary people by using the promouns of they/them when refering to Joe but she/her when referring to Misty, this is fantastic though did take a while to get used to but once you have read a little bit it becomes second nature.

The plot is clever and the author knows their stuff, I am terrible picking holes and one of the things that struck me was how tall was Lady Lady (I had to go back and re-read that part) because she was wearing Judt Garland’s dress. Judy Garland was only 4ft 11 and I did wonder if Judy’s dress would have been long enough for her, on checking Lady is about 5ft tall so Judy’s dress would have been fine on her. This made me ridiculously happy for some reason.

There is bribary and blackmail, bumbling cops and gangsters, this story has everything a cosy mytery should have and I really hope there will be more Misty Devine mysteries in future.

4 Stars