The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette - Classic Country House Crime Mystery Novel | Perfect for Book Clubs & Cozy Reading Nights

I have absolutely no idea how this book came to my attention, but I'm sincerely glad it did. This is one of those rare treasure finds which end up being a favorite book. In fact, I'm now aware of the fact that there are others in this series and plan to read them also.Probably best described as a classic mystery from my standpoint, it takes place in the present (2001) yet has the feel of the 1930's or 1940's. The author wove in all the modern technology and yet didn't take away the warm intimacy with the locations and characters. That's quite a feat, especially for the first novel in a series. The novel begins as Antonia Darcy realizes that it is the twentieth anniversary of two very important events; the royal wedding of the century and the disappearance of an eight year old girl from Twiston, the country house where Antonia was a guest. A vague uneasy feeling has always accompanied her memories of the disappearance of little Sonya Dufrette and now she thinks she might be going mad. Has she really begun seeing Sonya's father in London? Was that he who came into the library of the Military Club? Antonia wrote her experiences of that day soon after all the events took place and decides to read that account again to set these nagging doubts of what really happened to rest.I would like to call this an old fashioned mystery except that all the events take place in very modern times. It did, however, appeal to me and satisfy me in the same ways as those classic works by authors such as Dorothy Sayers, Patricia Wentworth, Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie. Antonia teams up with Major Hugh Payne in working out the details of what happened to Sonya. It certainly will be interesting to read in the next story how the mutual attraction between this divorcée and widower has progressed. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in a puzzle to be solved, but here done without bloody corpses scattered throughout the countryside.