Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of lighthearted mysteries.

In a nutshell:
It is 1920, and Lady Eleanor Swift has just inherited an estate, left to her by her deceased uncle. On her first night in town, she witnesses a murder, but no one believes her. Except the butler…

Worth quoting:
“I’m not really one for running to the first uniform around … Give a man a badge and an official title and he thinks he’s the sole decider of right and wrong.

Why I chose it:
As part of a gift card I received from my friend, she said I needed to purchase this.

Review:
How fun! I started reading this in the afternoon on Christmas, and finished it in the afternoon on Boxing Day. And I am delighted to learn there are like 20 books in the series. Author Bright is clearly prolific.

This book employs something I’m not usually a fan of – there are essentially a lot of scenes cut so that the reader doesn’t have all of the information. But in this book, it worked for me. Sometimes our narrator Lady Swift will find herself in a predicament at the end of one chapter, and wake up in bed at the start of the next. We generally find out what has happened pretty quickly, so I suppose on that front there is perhaps more exposition than one might enjoy. But as I said, I think it fit well into the book.

I appreciate that the main character is an interesting woman – she’s well-traveled, and can definitely hold her own. She needs to learn how to live in this new town — and new world, really — but she relies on other underestimating a society woman. In this instance, nearly every man she shares he story with (she witnessed a murder from afar) dismisses her outright. It is infuriating, and while she does at times show her frustration, she also refuses to accept no for an answer, going to great lengths to prove that she saw what she saw, and to try to sort out who was killed and who did the killing.

I also appreciate that the supporting characters are introduced and treated by the author with respect – I hope to learn more about them in the later books.