It's been six months since Lady Adelaide Compton buried her husband Major Rupert Charles Cressleigh Compton. Rupert was dashing, charming, and a bonafide war hero (a pilot!) in World War I. He was also, and this cannot be overstated, a first rate cad. Rupert died after crashing one of his cars in the Cotswold countryside, with a French mademoiselle in the passenger seat.
Adelaide has spent her mourning period bringing the country house up to scratch and is ready for a house party, much to the horror of her mother, the very proper Dowager Marchioness of Broughton. But, quite frankly, Rupert played Adelaide for a fool so why should she hang on to outdated notions of "mourning." It's 1924 after all.
Unfortunately just as her guests are about to arrive, Rupert, rather his ghost, makes an inconvenient appearance. Blathering on about how he cannot cross over to the other side until he does a few good deeds. Addie is, quite naturally, concerned for her sanity, but before she can start making plans to see a doctor (obviously it will need to be a discreet one!), a murder interrupts her house party.
The victim, who was not invited, is the ex-wife of one her neighbors, who was invited. Lady Kathleen Grant is found dead in one of the estate's barns, naked as the day she was born. She was also the very definition of a good time girl, a flapper who took many lovers, consumed a fair amount of drugs, and made her way through life being brash and unapologetic. Plenty of people, including nearly all the members of Addie's house party, had motive - but then her gardener, Mr. McGrath, turns up dead in his bed, and not from natural causes. Who would want the kindly Scottish gardener dead?
The local law makes a total muck of things, so riding in to solve the case is Devenand Hunter, an Anglo-Indian police inspector who has to somehow solve the case without ruffling anymore blue blood feathers. He's immediately intrigued by Lady Adelaide, even though he knows any attraction to her is disastrous, but also she seems rather eccentric. Always talking to herself...
I'm going to be honest, yes this sat in my TBR for a long time because of the "ghost thing." I have a hard time with paranormal anything as is, but ghosts in mystery novels have this unfortunate way of acting as sleuthing shortcuts - which just annoys me. I want the humans to actually put in the work and puzzle things out for themselves. And while Rupert naturally does do some noising around, his contribution is mainly to help Addie take the blinders off. There's quite a bit about some of her house party guests that she didn't know, just making her feel even more naïve in light of Rupert's disregard to their martial vows. Rupert's main purpose is largely comic relief and yes he was a cad in real life, but as a ghost cad it's all very funny - especially with Addie trying to stop herself from bickering with him for fear of her own sanity.
Inspector Hunter serves the role of intelligent outsider who has to come in and puzzle the whole mess out and for that he knows he needs some help. Despite her eccentricities, he rules out Lady Adelaide as a potential murderess fairly quickly, and comes to appreciate her insights on the victim and the potential suspects. She also has a stake in wrapping up the mystery, not only because the victim was found on her property, but also because her gardener was likely murdered because he saw something he shouldn't have seen.
The world-building is top notch, truly it cannot be overstated how well the author writes about the time period and sets her stage. There's also a very light romance brewing between Inspector Hunter and Adelaide that will undoubtedly further develop over the course of the next three books in the series.
My only quibble is that certain events take place off-stage (the local constable mucking up things for example) as the author moves her story ahead, but it's all so charming, delightful, really such a perfect blend of cozy and traditional British mystery, that it's hardly worth harping on. Truly a delight from the first page to the last. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
Final Grade = B+
3 comments:
SOLD!
I don't know when (or why) I fell of the Maggie Robinson train, but this is a sure sign I should hop on board again and in a hurry.
(So happy you had such a GREAT read!)
I really think you'll like this one - I thought about you more than once while reading it. The best part? It's a confined, four book series - so here's hoping it doesn't wear out it's welcome.
One thing of note I didn't mention in my review, even though born in England, the hero is Indian - so expect some micro-aggressive racism. For example, one or two of the female secondary characters comment on his "exotic" good looks and a couple of the male characters, naturally, look down on him while throwing their upper crust weight around.
I did expect the racism--I went ahead and read the blurbs for all four books, because of course.
(I already nabbed books two and four, because they're dirt cheap; I'm hesitating at the other two, because ten dollars for a digital 250 pages book goes against the grain more than a bit...I would grumble but not hesitate at $5 or $6, but $10, for a licensed file...yeah.)
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