Spunky Olive Bright!

I think that this book was an enjoyable historical fiction/mystery novel. Olive Bright was a brightly curious young woman doing her best to keep busy in trying to help the war effort, like her mother before her. Her main work is with the racing pigeons that she and her father raise and are trying to get approval to turn them into messenger birds for the war. I did like learning about how they are trained with the homing tests and such. That was interesting.

This book deals with the pigeons and how Olive is hired to work on the covert side with British Intelligence, which I liked, even with Jamie being cold and mean sometimes. The other drama in this book is the death of Miss Husselbee, local busybody who ferrets out all the secrets in the small town. Olive decides to add the task of solving that mystery as well as work with the pigeons. I liked the pigeons parts better, mostly because there were so many people with different possible motives for murder and it was sometimes hard to keep them straight.

I still ended up liking this book, despite the confusion of the names, as it had cool little details with the pigeons and small town life during the war with Girl Guides, changes in dances, things people did to keep up spirits, and even the Mass Observations of Miss Husselbee.

I would not mind reading more books with spunky and curious Olive Bright channeling Poirot to solve mysteries and be the best pigeoneer!