This is a slight cheat again this week but for a different reason than the last two weeks have been. I did read this last week – but it’s not out until next Thursday so that’s where the rule breaking occurs. But as I always say, I make the rules so I’m allowed to do what I want about them in the end. It was my favourite thing I read last week though so it totally deserves this spot.
I really enjoyed The Murder at Worlds End and so I was looking forward to this follow up – and I was not disappointed. Stephen and Miss Decima are now in London, installed in a mansion block near the Royal Albert Hall. Miss Decima is and running a detective agency from it. But all the cases she is getting are household pilfering and she’s is getting bored. Stephen is finding is feet in a new neighbourhood and is growing frustrated that he’s not as involved in the detecting as he was hoping – and that he’s running the whole household on his own and having books thrown at him when he’s not doing things as quickly as Decima wants him to. But all this changes when they go to a Suffragette meeting ahead of the Coronation and Stephen is first on the scene of a murder. This also means he’s the police’s prime suspect – and so he and Miss Decima are back on the case again.
The atmosphere of pre-Coronation London is great – and so is the portrayal of the various factions within the movement for women’s suffrage. Too often this can get flattened to just the suffragettes, but this has got the peaceful and the militant factions in the thick of it – as well as all the various movements trying to prevent women from getting the vote. It’s also got the working class – or more accurate the servants class view, all of which makes for an intriguing mystery to solve. It’s also funny – Stephen’s antics as he tries to find his place in the neighbourhood are great, as is Decima and her various foibles. The body count is fairly high – but it manages to balance the light and the shade really well. Miss Decima hasn’t changed her character since the first book and so she’s as cantankerous and difficult as ever – and the book is trying hard not to soften her into fluffy old lady, which must be a temptation given the rest of the genre.
I raced through this and I really hope that there is a third book coming because this showed that there is plenty of material for mining in London for these two.
My copy came from NetGalley and as I said it’s out on the 22nd so you can pre-order it now if you’re desperate to read it after this rave review. Here are the Kindle and Kobo links. It’a a hardback release but should be fairly easy to find in the stores when it does come out – Waterstones have a signed version for preorder which is usually a good sign for availability and I’ve seen Murder at Worlds End all over the place since it came out last year. There’s an audiobook too – which looks like it might be dual narration between Joe Jameson and Juliet Stevenson which would be fun.
Happy Reading!
