Lavender House

 Lavender House by A.C. Rosen, 274 pages.

Andy Mill's life has gone to pieces after he was caught in a raid on a gay bar by his fellow policemen. In 1952 he's lucky that his job and reputation are all he lost, plenty of other men in his situation get beaten and jailed by his former colleagues instead. He's hours from tossing himself into San Francisco Bay when a widow comes up to him in a bar and offers him a job. Her wife (by all but law) was Irene Lamontaine, soap mogul and matriarch of Lavender House, an isolated country estate that serves as a haven for her queer family. But now Irene has been murdered, their perfectly protected bubble has turned poisonous with secrets, and Andy is their only chance of finding the murderer without destroying their own lives. 

I have some conflicting feelings about this book. I almost put it down in the first couple of chapters because the writing was going for gumshoe but mostly just felt very simplistic. I am ultimately glad that I kept going, because I did find myself pulled into the mystery. That being said, the mystery is not all that subtle and I found the conclusion to be something of a let down. The mystery itself reminded me a little of Agatha Christie's Poirot, and I think fans of older mysteries may enjoy it more.