Duplicate Death is the sixth book in Georgette Heyer's murder mystery series. I read it back in 2015 and just finished rereading it as I move chronologically through them all. I remembered this one pretty well, except for who had actually done it! Because that's just me and my terrible memory. But I remembered the characters were more sordid then usual and there are a couple of not nice words.
What I missed the last time I read it was that not only do we have Inspector Hemingway from the previous books on the case, but we also get to reconnect with three characters from They Found Him Dead. It's been 13 years since Hemingway solved the mystery of the Kane murders. Young Timothy Kane was 14 at the time and completely besotted with playing detective much to the amusement and annoyance of everyone. But now he's grown and gone through World War II. His older half-brother Jim made it through the war too, sans a leg, and is still happily married to Patricia. They have two children they dote on.
Timothy has fallen in love with Beulah Birtley, a plucky young woman who has a past. She hates being secretary to Mrs. Haddington, a grasping social climber who only cares about getting her beautiful daughter married to the richest and most prominent man she can. But Cynthia Haddington is a spoiled, thoughtless child of 19. Mrs. Haddington hosts a bridge party, only in the middle of it someone gets strangled while taking a phone call in the 'boudoir.'
Lots of colorful characters, including a suspect who's gay. I especially liked Hemingway's new assistant Inspector Grant who is Scottish and has a habit of annoying Hemingway by breaking into Gaelic all the time. This story is more bleak than many others of Heyer's (an effect of living through WWII?) and the play between Hemingway and Grant supplies some nice comic relief.
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