It's World War II in England. The men are off fighting, the Yanks are over here, and rationing is everywhere. Kate Kingsbury's A Bicycle Built for Murder introduces us to her reluctant sleuth Lady Elizabeth. She's a divorcee whose parents were killed in the Blitz and she is now in charge of maintaining Manor House. One of her tenants' daughter is found murdered, and she is asked to look into it -since the the remaining constables are not too eager to have had to have come out of retirement due to wartime. The murder is being blamed on the Yanks, but Lady Elizabeth - mindful of the fact that the Manor is about to have American officers stationed there - tries to remind the locals that the Yanks are not all bad.
The second book is equally as fun. Death is in the Air has a murder of a land girl, but the village is more nervous by the fact that there is a downed German airman on the loose. They would have caught him when he parachuted down, but some folks were a bit distracted by getting the silk of his parachute.
Kingsbury does a great job of giving her readers the flavor of wartime England in the countryside where the London bombings seem so far away. Lady Elizabeth is a great character. She is unsure of herself, but tries to carry on the family tradition anyway in this rapidly changing world. And everyone tries to adjust to wartime deprivations. A great series.
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