The Three Dahlias

Krystyna Green, publishing director at Constable, writes:

We published Katy Watson’s wonderful The Three Dahlias this week and it’s got off to a cracking start as Waterstones have selected it as their Crime Thriller of the Month… how exciting!  And you can just see why everyone has fallen in love with this book. Not only do we have several examples of books within a book, as each chapter opens with the fictional Golden Age crime writer’s Lettice Davenport’s female sleuth Dahlia Lively passing comment on some aspect of crime-solving, we then have a contemporary country house murder mystery – set at a crime convention, something we all love going to! The story features three wonderfully imagined heroines, all of whom have played Dahlia Lively in their acting careers. We have national treasure Rosalind King, the oldest and original Dahlia Lively who brought the character to the silver screen. We then have Caro Hooper who played the TV Dahlia for thirteen years. Finally there’s Posy Starling, fresh out of the fame wilderness (and rehab) who is going to play the rebooted Dahlia in a new movie for a new generation. 

So when the inevitable murder happens at the crime convention, the three actresses have to ask themselves and each other: What Would Dahlia Do? and turn amateur sleuths to solve the baffling mystery. 

Everyone should find something they love within these pages: we have three wonderfully imagined female protagonists, an intriguing crime set in a country house which is hosting a murder festival weekend… and Katy really does seem to have cracked the unimaginable, creating a contemporary Golden Age murder mystery. And the result is such good fun!