It’s Tuesday and I’m back with this week’s Book of the Week – which is actually a book that came out last week. I’m even topical. Go me!
The year is 1910 and Haley’s Comet is passing over the earth. On a tidal island of Cornwall, a Viscount is preparing for the apocalypse. But when the staff of Tithe Hall unseal their rooms the next morning, Lord Conrad Stockingham Welt is dead in his office and a murder investigation gets underway. Straight into the police’s crosshairs is Stephen Pike, who arrived at the house fresh from Borstal the day before the murder. But Stephen knows he didn’t do it – he was looking after the elderly aunt of the victim Miss Decima Stockingham, who is foul mouthed, but very, very smart. Soon the two of them are trying to work out who did commit the murder as the policeman in charge of the case makes wild claims to try and pin it onto one of the servants.
This has got such a great premise – I love a cantankerous older woman heroine and the pairing of Miss Decima and Stephen is really entertaining and makes a great use of the above stairs-below stairs nature of the plot. And it’s really quite humorous at times too. I will admit I had the solution worked out well before they did though – but forgive them because there is world building and setting up going on here for a sequel and I am very much here for that when it happens.
My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo as well as in hardback. I’ll be watching out for it in the shops.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
This sounds like a great cosy read and I love the title
It’s a lot of fun. it’s a really good set up for a locked room mystery and the characters are great. I saw it mentioned on Waterstones’s November new books email so I’m hoping it’ll do well.