Schellman transports readers to Regency-era England and tantalizes them with a traditional whodunit.
Fledgling Regency sleuth Lady Lily Adler solves another baffling murder, this time battling…a ghost!
Now that he’s supported Lily in her widow’s grief and abetted her in unraveling two perplexing murder mysteries, Capt. Jack Hartley, the stalwart friend of Lily’s late husband, Freddy, has decided to return to his first love, the sea. After Lily and friends Ned and Ofelia Carroway bid him a fond farewell, they stop at the home of Lily’s Aunt Eliza in Hampshire before a planned return to London. Eliza and her close friend Susan Clarke can’t resist suggesting that Lily would be a perfect match for Matthew Spencer, owner of nearby Morestead Park, before the discussion turns to accounts of a terrifying local ghost. Spencer is indeed courtly and attentive to Lily, but their initial meeting is interrupted by the unctuous Mr. Wright. Scarcely has he introduced himself when his distraught daughter, Selina, bursts in with the news that Mrs. Wright has been murdered by “the lady in gray,” the aforementioned ghost. The intrepid, methodical Lily immediately sets about unraveling the mystery, abetted in Jack’s absence by Ofelia and Ned. Confounding the case is the fact that the victim’s door was locked from the inside. Could the clandestine affair between Selina’s brother, Thomas, and one of the maids be an important piece of the puzzle? The plotline of Lily’s continued self-discovery and empowerment continues in this third adventure, stitched into the period tapestry in ways that never overshadow the murder mystery.
Schellman transports readers to Regency-era England and tantalizes them with a traditional whodunit.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63910-078-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another odd and exciting case for a pair of passionate sleuths who never let Victorian mores stand in their way.
Do vampires exist? That’s a question for a detective duo whose cases are never mundane in 1890s England.
Lepidopterist Veronica Speedwell cares little about the gossip swirling around her and lover, naturalist and adventurer Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, scion of an aristocratic family, who eschews the trappings of his class. Together, they’ve solved many unusual murder cases, and they’re rather bored with their ordinary job of cataloging an extensive collection for the Earl of Rosemorran at his home in Marylebone. The arrival of their friend J.J., a journalist, and then of Scotland Yard detective Mornaday, both with tales of woe, makes their lives distinctly more interesting. Mornaday tells them that the body of a man named Maurice Quincey was found in a carriage outside Highgate Cemetery, looking as if he might have died of natural causes but for the fang marks in his neck. This sparks an argument between the lovers, as Veronica naturally thinks of vampires while Stoker ridicules the idea. Oddly, Jameson Harkness, Quincey’s best friend, died the week before in a fall from a balcony, possibly not by accident. The only real clues to Quincey’s death are the sighting of a Romany boy near the carriage and the shifty testimony of one of Quincey’s friends about a secret society. A visit to a Romany camp is interesting and informative. Stoker and Veronica receive an invitation from Lord Ruthven, who certainly looks like a vampire, and his friend Asphodel, who’s very witchy indeed, but both are fakes and fraudsters willing to use potions and poisons to get their way. The detectives find themselves in grave danger but are unafraid of anything that’s coming.
Another odd and exciting case for a pair of passionate sleuths who never let Victorian mores stand in their way.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780593815731
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Readers will be treated to escapist fun and an homage to some beloved books.
Hare harks back to the age of Agatha Christie in a sparkling murder mystery set on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic in 1936.
Jazz singer Lena Aldridge, who narrates this charmingly retro novel, boards the RMS Queen Mary with a hefty envelope of cash and a passel of secrets. For one thing, she just witnessed a murder—or maybe more than witnessed. The scumbag owner of the nightclub where she sings has been dispatched with a cyanide-laced drink, and just as she thinks it might be expeditious to skedaddle, she meets mysterious musical agent Charlie Bacon, who offers her an all-expenses-paid voyage to the New World. He says he’s working for a Broadway impresario, a friend of her late father’s, who would like to offer her a role on the Great White Way. In London, Lena didn’t conceal the fact that her father was Black, but Charlie advises her to pass for White while traveling in first class on the Queen Mary since “Americans could be funny about things like that.” Once onboard, she becomes entangled with the large and troubled Parker clan. The Parkers are one of those wealthy American families, complete with personal doctor and private secretary, in which everyone has something to conceal. Soon enough, one after another of the clan succumbs to murder. As the bodies are falling around her, Lena finds comfort in the company of Black musician Will Goodman, but he can’t prevent her becoming the target of several attacks before the mystery is finally solved. Lena—whose hard-won wisdom includes the fact that “four martinis on an empty stomach will always result in poor decision-making”—is an appealing heroine, and Hare handles her old-fashioned material with a light touch, a keen eye for period detail, and a sturdy grasp on her complicated but at least semicredible plot.
Readers will be treated to escapist fun and an homage to some beloved books.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43925-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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