The Daisy Hayes Mysteries Series

1967 in Swinging London. The Beatles had just released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". At Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park the hippies staged sit-ins to legalize marijuana. And even though she was blind since birth, it did not escape Daisy Hayes’ attention that “The times they are a-changin’...” But just as she reached middle-age and the height of her powers as an artist, Daisy was visited by a ghost from her past. An accomplice in an old story of revenge appeared at the opening of her new sculpture exhibition and made demands she could not ignore. The man who challenged her was a desperate father, who told Daisy that his fifteen-year-old daughter—a hippie girl—had disappeared without a trace a year before. The police was powerless, or indifferent, or both. “You must help me to find her, Daisy Hayes. And you know why I’m asking you? It’s because I happen to know that you’re a real killer...” “Nick Aaron has been known to write a fast-paced tale or two. But here fast-paced is not ‘le mot juste’. This thriller is designed like a roller coaster, and the author will take you for a hair-raising ride.” — The Weekly Banner This is the second volume of The Daisy Hayes Trilogy: I D for Daisy II Blind Angel of Wrath III Daisy and Bernard Warning: a trilogy always has the disadvantage (?) that you have to read three books in the right order. On the other hand, each of these has a beginning, a middle and an end, and could be read on its own if you’re willing to miss out on the narrative arc of the whole. This trilogy as a whole is a story of crime, punishment, and redemption, and at the same time a portrait of the twentieth century as witnessed by one remarkable blind woman. In the first volume Daisy Hayes is between 16 and 27, and she takes us along with her through World War II. The second volume brings us to the Swinging Sixties, Daisy is then 44. And finally in the third book she’s 66 and it is 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down. Dear Daisy would have been born in 1922 and would probably be dead by now, or alternatively, still alive and kicking in her 90s.

The Bottom Line: “A highly engaging World War II mystery with a remarkable amateur sleuth at the helm.” — BestThrillers.com Set during World War II, D for Daisy begins as the eponymously named British bomber returns to base. The landing is a harrowing one, as the plane’s pilot, Ralph Prendergast, is dead on arrival. It’s up to the flight engineer to take the controls while the rest of the crew hangs on for dear life. Ralph’s 21-year-old wife, Daisy, has seemingly been prepared for each of her husband’s missions to be his last. As such, she’s remarkably composed when told of Ralph’s passing. Initially, she assumes he’s been killed by a stray bullet or piece of flak. But in the emotional scene where Daisy, who is blind, feels his corpse, she discovers that her husband has no external wounds. Daisy’s demand for an autopsy is denied. But after collecting Ralph’s suitcase, she discovers the flask he had taken with him on his last mission and takes it to a pharmacist for analysis. Arsenic is discovered in the sample, which is all the evidence Daisy needs to set about attempting to solve her husband’s murder. In Daisy, author Nick Aaron has created a remarkable amateur sleuth. At times, her formidable powers of deduction seem to be enhanced by her blindness, and she is somehow more observant than her peers when it comes to her insight into human psychology and motive. Daisy’s own telling of her experience throughout (“Do you realise that I have no way of picturing how gold or crystal glitters?”) make her all the more sympathetic. In a moment of meta-awareness shortly after inspecting her husband’s body, she declares, “let’s see, what would you have to do as an amateur sleuth?” As sleuths go, she’s also remarkably patient. Once she determines who has murdered her husband, she’s content to wait until just the right moment to attempt to pounce—even if justice will be years in the making. The novel’s strengths lie in how well Aaron draws Daisy’s character, the tantalizing mystery of Ralph's death and an unsettling romantic suspense that carries the plot forward. Aaron’s prose is primarily driven by dialogue and exposition rather than evocative description, which makes this first entry in Aaron’s Blind Sleuth series a quick read that can easily be devoured over a weekend. Fans of World War II period fiction will relish the unconventional chess match between Daisy and her husband’s killer, which simmers throughout the narrative until its satisfying conclusion. (BestThrillers review)

In 1952 there were children everywhere. Or so it seemed to Daisy Hayes, blind since birth, who at the age of 29 had just tied the knot for the second time—to an intercontinental pilot. But on their first flight as a married couple an engine broke down—sabotage?—and they were grounded. Now, there are worst places to stop over for repairs than Rio de Janeiro, especially if you’re staying at a grand hotel on Ipanema Beach. But then again, Daisy wouldn’t be our favorite blind sleuth if during her stay she hadn’t stumbled on a murderous plot that exposed her to mortal dangers. Groping around in the dark, she found her exceptional mind pitted against that of an arch-criminal, and with her usual courage she tried to foil a devilish conspiracy that spanned three continents and threatened the very existence of the most innocent and vulnerable victims. “A Super Constellation, Rio de Janeiro at its best and at its worst, a Chinese brainteaser and T. S. Eliot’s ‘The waste Land’. Mix and shake. That is Nick Aaron’s astonishing recipe for yet another unconventional tale.” — The Weekly Banner This 58k novel is a stand-alone in the Daisy Hayes series: ID for Daisy IIBlind Angel of Wrath IIIDaisy and Bernard IVHoneymoon in Rio

In 1946 Daisy and her friend Beatrice decided to move to Paris, because they were fed up with limping London, still crippled and depressed in the aftermath of the war. And indeed, in the spring of that year, Paris was the place to be—isn’t it always? In particular, some very interesting things were going on in Saint-Germain-des-Prés: existentialism, free love, and American jazz throbbing through the night in the cellar clubs. Then one day, just as the two were settling into a new life, a little boy stepped forward in the street and said, “Can you come with me? My mummy is all funny.” And he led them to a garret where they found his mother’s dead body. A very disturbing murder case was thrown in their path, and one thing leading to another, Daisy Hayes, blind sleuth extraordinaire, had to rise to the challenge as never before. “As a great admirer of Simenon and his Maigret mysteries, Nick Aaron now introduces the ‘Commissaire Divisionnaire’ Simonetti from the Parisian ‘Brigade Criminelle’. A gentle spoof and a grudging recognition of debt.” — The Weekly Banner This 63k novel is a stand-alone in the Blind Sleuth series: I D for Daisy II Blind Angel of Wrath III Daisy and Bernard IV Honeymoon in Rio V First Spring in Paris VI The Nightlife of the Blind

In the summer of 1989 the Iron Curtain was unravelling, and Daisy Hayes had just become a pensioner who liked to do her ironing while listening to the latest news on the radio. The doorbell chimed. A police officer handed over a summons—printed in Braille. Daisy was being asked to testify about a baffling and gruesome murder, and had to follow the policeman at once. During the ride to New Scotland Yard, even before the first interview took place, the blind lady reflected that, though she knew nothing about this case, she would not be able to prove her innocence without revealing the two murders she actually had committed—many years ago. In an original twist to the “good cop-bad cop” routine, the older police investigator in charge of this strange case seemed to be very much in love with the blind suspect, and encouraged her to come clean and find redemption at long last. “As we have almost come to expect from this author, Nick Aaron playfully tweaks and mixes the conventions of different genres, offering us a compelling murder mystery that is at the same time a heart-rending romance.” – The Weekly Banner This is the third volume of The Daisy Hayes Trilogy: I D for Daisy II Blind Angel of Wrath III Daisy and Bernard Warning: a trilogy always has the disadvantage (?) that you have to read three books in the right order. On the other hand, each of these has a beginning, a middle and an end, and could be read on its own if you’re willing to miss out on the narrative arc of the whole. This trilogy as a whole is a story of crime, punishment, and redemption, and at the same time a portrait of the twentieth century as witnessed by one remarkable blind woman. In the first volume Daisy Hayes is between 16 and 27, and she takes us along with her through World War II. The second volume brings us to the Swinging Sixties, Daisy is then 44. And finally in the third book she’s 66 and it is 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down. Dear Daisy would have been born in 1922 and would probably be dead by now, or alternatively, still alive and kicking in her 90s.

Chief Inspector Nigel Cockett could have retired at the age of 55, but like a fool he stayed on for that last promotion that would raise his pension just a little more. Unfortunately, just then a corpse turned up in the holding cell of his own police station. Inspector Manson, his young colleague fresh from police college—the chappy that was supposed to succeed him—seemed to think that he, Nigel, was the culprit. Just because he was the only person who had the key to the lock-up in his possession. “This won’t do at all,” the policeman thought, “I’ve been framed!” So he called his old acquaintance Daisy Hayes on the phone. She was the only real-life sleuth he’d ever met with any talent for solving murders. He begged her to help him prove his innocence: “The only thing I can say for sure is that I didn’t do it!” “This is your classical locked-room mystery, with a twist of lemon, and the chief suspect is none other than Nigel Cockett, of ‘D for Daisy’ fame. Our favourite blind sleuth could not resist the challenge! Serve ice-cold.” — The Weekly Banner

There is something special about meeting an old acquaintance by chance. A reunion with someone you were close to a long time ago always seems a bit miraculous. But for the blind especially this is a very unlikely occurrence, as you might as well pass one another by without even knowing it. So in 1984, at the age of sixty-one, Daisy Hayes was quite thrilled to encounter her old classmate Janet, blind like her, in her doctor’s waiting room. Then a disturbing fact became clear: Janet did not have such fond memories of our blind sleuth when she was a schoolgirl. She even asked, “Remember the night Vicky died? I’ve always wanted to know: did you push her down the stairs?” Suddenly Daisy found herself accused of murder; she was appalled, and asked herself, “Do all my old schoolmates think I pushed Vicky? How can I prove my innocence forty years after the facts?” To achieve just that, she was forced to go rooting in a distant past, with shocking results. “Two of Nick Aaron’s most intriguing creations come together in a most intricate plot: the ‘Anne Sullivan’, Daisy’s old school, and her son Jonathan, a.k.a. Johnny-John, who puts the words 'problem-child' to shame. Enjoy!” — The Weekly Banner This 60k novel is a stand-alone Blind Sleuth Mystery: I D for Daisy II Blind Angel of Wrath III Daisy and Bernard IV Honeymoon in Rio V First Spring in Paris VI The Nightlife of the Blind The Blind Sleuth Mysteries Daisy Hayes was born in London in 1922. Her father was a bank manager, hoping for a son, but he had to settle for a blind daughter. Now what do you do when your child is blind since birth and you have the means to do all that is necessary to help her? You hire a private tutor to stimulate her verbal development in the first years of her life, because you realize how vital language will become for her. Then you send her to an exclusive school where everything is done to develop the minds and resourcefulness of blind girls. There they teach them all these fancy techniques of spatial orientation and mind mapping. And before you know it, your darling daughter has developed an exceptional intellect that just seems to draw murder mysteries like a magnet... The Blind Sleuth Mysteries form a portrait of the twentieth century as witnessed by this remarkable blind woman. In volume one Daisy takes us along with her through World War II. The second book brings us to 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down. At the same time these novels form the life story of Daisy Hayes. “First Spring in Paris” and “Honeymoon in Rio”, for instance, take place in 1946 and 1952, and connect nicely to “D for Daisy”, that ends in 1950. “The Nightlife of the Blind”, on the other hand, takes place in 1984, five years before “Daisy and Bernard”.

The last days that Daisy Hayes spent in Rome in 1964 were quite exciting. She and Father Contini went back to the crypt and made some disturbing discoveries. Not about Desiderata herself, but about the archaeologist who had investigated the place in the thirties. The quest now led them to the German town of Trier, where they teamed up again in the fall of that same year to continue their research. In AD 67 things were looking good for Desi and the Pomponius family in their beautiful domus: they lived like princes. But as her friends the Christians went through yet another period of persecution, the blind young woman found it hard to decide on who’s side she wanted to be and what she intended to do with her life. Would she ever find love? So both she and Daisy ended up trying to grapple with the greatest riddle of all: “Who are you really, Desiderata?” And what’s more, did she become a Christian in the end?

In 1992 Daisy Hayes had inherited Bottomleigh House and was struggling to keep it afloat financially. Then she got a letter from an archaeologist, asking her to help make sense of a mysterious message that had just been dug up in Rome. Time to hook up again with Morag, her deaf friend from the ‘project’ in 1964, and to go back to the Eternal City. In AD 64, after Feli’s death, Desiderata had scores to settle and a ‘twin sister’ to bury. Her new friends the Christians gave her sanctuary, but her relationship with them was a bit strained. Soon the ‘Community’ and their blind protégée had to part company. Eventually, assisted by her uncle Balbus, ex-centurion of the X Fretensis legion, she found a path out of her troubles, and helped him search for a stolen treasure. So, 1928 years later, Daisy went looking for a gold cache from antiquity, hoping to solve a new mystery, and even more to reconnect with Desi, her soulmate from ancient Rome.

The Bottom Line: “An unputdownable historical thriller that gloriously tethers ancient Rome to the 1960s.” — BestThrillers.com In the sixth installment of Nick Aaron’s wildly popular Blind Sleuth Mysteries series, set in 1964, 41-year-old intern Daisy Hayes travels to Rome. There, upon invitation from doting Father Boudry, she has the opportunity to study sculptures by touch at the Vatican Museums. It’s a rare treat — as Daisy astutely points out, the blind aren’t allowed to touch sculptures in museums. But as we all know, sleuths — even amateur ones like Daisy — can never truly go on holiday without finding a delicious case to solve. In this case, Daisy’s mystery happened 1900 years earlier. Desiderata, for whom the book is named, was a blind masseuse working in the Roman baths who overheard plans of an impending coup. Desiderata carved the message into a stone, only to be discovered by Daisy during her studies 19 centuries later. Through Daisy’s investigation, the book’s primary suspense happens in flashbacks, as Aaron’s tale of Desi and friend Feli puts both in mortal danger. As Daisy unlocks one clue after the other — including the location of a special chapel — we are granted increasingly compelling insights into first-century Roman life. Aaron’s cinematic historical descriptions are fully engrossing. Standout passages include those at the Circus of Caligula, in which Nero anxiously awaits a series of gory executions, and during the great fire, when you can practically feel the heat coming off the burning city. Aaron moves between the two timelines seamlessly, and while Daisy’s journey is compelling, Desiderata’s treacherous plight is what makes the book truly memorable. That goes double for fans of Roman history — the book is chock full of fascinating nuggets that even seasoned Romanophiles may not know. While The Desiderata Stone will please fans of the series, the novel also works perfectly well as an entry point to Aaron’s work. (BestThrillers review)

In 1949 Daisy Hayes had a patient more or less her own age, Odile Speed, with whom she had a good rapport at once, and who told her about a strange kind of duel, interrupted for many years, from a short story by Pushkin. Then on Christmas Eve of 1952 our blind sleuth extraordinaire stumbled on the scene of a murder just being committed. She bumped into the culprit and the victim died in her arms. The police interrogated her at once. But soon it became clear that the testimony of a blind witness was bound to be worthless in a court of law, the results of the coroner’s inquest were inconclusive at best, and it seemed that the murderer, whoever he was, would get away scot-free. It was only in 1986, during a stay in Zermatt with her old friend Beatrice, that Daisy was confronted again with this ‘cold case’. She then experienced first-hand what it is like to fight your own version of a ‘Pushkin duel’ to the bitter end. “Nick Aaron can be a strange storyteller. No one else would devise a plot combining a short story by Pushkin, the ‘discovery’ of DNA in 1953, and a very British scandal. Did solving a murder ever involve such disparate puzzle pieces?” — The Weekly Banner

While treating a patient in the fall of 1972, Daisy managed to winkle out of him that he worked for MI6. Then she blabbed about a planned visit to East Berlin with her friend Margery, who was a chemistry researcher at King’s College. Back at the office, the man asked his spooks to do some background checks. It turned out that without even knowing it his blind physiotherapist and her chum had an indirect connection to a high-ranking communist party boss... Meanwhile, in East Berlin, clever operatives of the GDR secret services realized that Margery must know some pretty vital scientific secrets. They decided to put Hans Konradi on the case during the visit of the two Englishwomen to Ost. Young Hans was not an agent, just a charming student with fluent English who could easily be pressured into spying for his country. But Hans had an agenda of his own, and ‘Operation Berlin Fall’ did not turn out the way the spymasters on both sides of the Wall had envisioned.

While Daisy and Darren roamed the countryside around Bottomleigh House in their faithful little car, they chanced upon a small airfield called Gremian Hill, which caught their fancy at once. They were told by members of the local parachuting club that a blind person or a paraplegic too could skydive, and they became regulars to find out more. But soon tragedy struck, a parachute failed to open and one of their new friends fell to her death under suspicious circumstances. What’s more, the chutes were kept under lock and key in a special shed, so sabotage seemed impossible. Time for our blind sleuth to tackle this locked-room mystery, and when another member of the Icarus Skydiving Club fell to her death and the press started talking about a serial killer, it became even more urgent to uncover the truth.

While visiting her son Jonathan in prison, Daisy heard a strange story. He’d befriended an old man who was serving a life sentence for a crime he hadn’t committed. Of course every inmate says that, but Johnny-John believed this man’s protestations of innocence and begged his mother to look into it. The facts of the case had taken place in Zambia long ago, when it was a British colony, so Daisy started her investigation among ex-colonials who’d returned to England. However, it soon became clear that the people holding the key to the mystery were still living in Africa, so Daisy took a flight to Lusaka to seek out these witnesses. The truth turned out to be as strange as life in the African bush can be. It slowly emerged from a missionary daughter’s rambling memoir about the long-lost world she grew up in. Daisy had to follow a winding trail, but in the end she was mysteriously led to unexpected revelations.

In 1960 Daisy Hayes was asked to replace a physiotherapist on an ocean liner, for just one round trip to New York, at very short notice. Before she knew it she was sailing on the RMS Histria, in the thick of the life on board. With the intrigues and love triangles going on around her, she marveled at the potential for murderous plots on such a voyage. “It’s a good thing,” she told the ship’s detective, “that a liner at sea is a very bad place for killing someone. Too confined to do it undetected, and you can’t get away afterwards.” Then one day at dawn a corpse was found floating on the open ocean ahead of the Histria. The ship came to a lumbering halt, a launch was sent out to retrieve the dead body, and while some early birds watched from the rails, it was hoisted on board. And the corpse turned out to be that of a first-class passenger. Impossible! Or isn’t it? Our favorite blind sleuth could hardly wait to find out.

Nerva, the future emperor of Rome, called the Christian faith “Desiderata’s lost cause”. At the time the ‘Universal Church’ counted only a few thousand faithful rather than untold millions, and he didn’t think it would last, as the Second Coming of the Messiah was looking more and more like a no-show. His blind friend Desiderata would demur and argue. Then in AD 76 the first elected Pope was brutally murdered, and Desi realized that the very survival of her faith was at stake. Delegates from all over the empire had come to Rome for the Pope’s ordination, but now suspicion reigned. How could they choose the victim’s successor, while they could be electing his murderer? To restore confidence the killer had to be unmasked urgently. However, solving a murder isn’t simple when killing a man is not even a crime according to the law. In the end the ‘lost cause’ was not the one Desi expected.