Wouldn't it be Deadly (Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery, #1)

by D E Ireland

Following her successful appearance at an Embassy Ball-where Eliza Doolittle won Professor Henry Higgins' bet that he could pass off a Cockney flower girl as a duchess - Eliza becomes an assistant to his chief rival Emil Nepommuck. After Nepommuck publicly takes credit for transforming Eliza into a lady, an enraged Higgins submits proof to a London newspaper that Nepommuck is a fraud. When Nepommuck is found with a dagger in his back, Henry Higgins becomes Scotland Yard's prime suspect. However, Eliza learns that most of Nepommuck's pupils had a reason to murder their blackmailing teacher. As another suspect turns up dead and evidence goes missing, Eliza and Higgins realize the only way to clear the Professor's name is to discover which of Nepommuck's many enemies is the real killer. When all the suspects attend a performance of Hamlet at Drury Lane, Eliza and Higgins don their theatre best and race to upstage a murderer. Eliza and Higgins make a surprising and charming pair of detectives in this delightfully hilarious series debut, which transports readers to Edwardian London, from the aristocratic enviorns of Mayfair to the dangerous back alleys of the East End.
Wouldn't It Be Deadly boasts a cunning mystery, no shortage of interesting suspects, and some of the most memorable characters of English literature.

• ISBN10: 1250049350
• ISBN13: 9781250049353
• Publish Date: 23 September 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 17 May 2016
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Minotaur Books,US
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

Disclaimer:  I've never seen My Fair Lady although I'm thoroughly familiar with the premise.  This means I can't accurately comment on how accurate the authors' representations of the characters are.   

So saying, there was a lot to like about this book:  the writing was smooth, the pacing consistent and the mystery plotting was excellent.  Everything about the book held my attention... until the last scene.  It started out well enough, but slowly became eye-rolling; after a brief interlude of plausibility, it freight-trained straight into slapstick, where the authors outdid themselves and pushed straight on through to ludicrous.  If their editor cared about them at all, he or she would have ripped out and shredded all the pages after the secondary character, Roz, stepped out of the washroom.   

There's a second book, but I don't feel the least compelled to read it; the idea of the authors trying to best themselves makes me cringe.