Review: Murder In Westminster

2024 has been the year I've desperately been trying to clean out languishing mystery and suspense ARCs from my Kindle. While I'm not going to be totally caught up by the end of the year, I've put a serious dent in that pile and next up on the hit parade is Murder in Westminster by Vanessa Riley.  Riley has also written romances and historical fiction, but this is the first book in her Lady Worthing historical mystery series.

Lady Abigail Worthing is at the theater with her cousin getting ready to enact a bit of subterfuge in order to slip away to a secret abolitionist meeting. The movement has stalled out politically (in large part due to Haitian independence...) and Abigail is hoping to jumpstart the cause by sharing first-hand accounts on the atrocities her husband has seen while traveling.  She slips away from the theater only to get word that 1) the meeting is cancelled and 2) her estranged sister is supposedly on her way to Abigail's home to talk.  Abigail hurries home to meet her sister only to discover the dead body of her insufferable neighbor's estranged wife lying in her back yard.

Stapleton Henderson is the insufferable neighbor who was erecting the fence that his wife, Juliet, was found hanging from. The fence was going up because Abigail's yippy, ill-trained dog wasn't getting on with Henderson's well-trained, much larger greyhounds.  Anyway, Juliet was his estranged wife but was found on Abigail's property, oh and Abigail is a black woman. Needless to say they both have very real concerns that the magistrate is going to try to pin the murder on one of them so they sorta, kinda, team up.  Mainly though this is Abigail's show. With nothing but time on her hands, and her husband off god knows where, she's gotten in the habit of helping the magistrate solve a few cases.

There's a good story here. The world-building is excellent. It was nice to read a diverse account of Regency England during this period and the state of the abolitionist movement at that time.  Unfortunately it all suffers from a preponderance of backstory that's just dropped in and never fully developed.  How bad is it?  Let's put it this way, before I started this book I "knew" it was Book 1 in a series. However after a few chapters I thought, "I must be wrong. Let me look up to see if I picked up Book 2 or 3 by mistake."

Narrator: Wendy did, in fact, pick up Book 1.

Here's some of what is floating around the periphery:

• Abigail has second sight and visions - inherited from her Jamaican mother

• Abigail has helped the magistrate solve multiple crimes in the past. That's pretty much it. It's hinted at that the crimes were "thefts" but if you want more detail you're out of luck.

• Abigail apparently saved her husband from some false accusation? And when he was freed he married her, but then promptly took off to sail the world leaving her alone. What? Huh?

• Right around the time of her marriage, her sister got upset about something or other (What you might ask? No idea. Literally NO IDEA) and took off. Nobody knows where she is except for Abigail's godfather apparently.

• Speaking of, sounds like the godfather was in love with Abigail's mother but instead she married Abigail's father and honestly I have no idea what the point of any of this is given so little of it is actually fully addressed by the end of this book.

Backstory is fine. In fact it's needed with most stories as it helps with character development. The problem is that there's a ton of it just dropped in here and none of it is fleshed out. At all. Presumably it may be fodder for the rest of the series, but all it does here is distract from the main plot.

You know, the dead woman found hanging on a half constructed fence. Remember her?

The world-building is certainly good enough to leave me curious for the next book in the series but I was so frustrated by the lack of care with the backstory I'm not sure if I'll continue on. All in all, this was a bit of a frustrating reading experience for me.

Final Grade = C-