A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder

Ok, full disclosure, I stumbled across this while looking for The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, the upcoming sequel to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. But don’t worry, A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder has a full helping of scandal, snark, and murder.

When the story opens, Countess Frances Harleigh, an American heiress turned titled Brit, is just coming out of mourning for her husband. Reggie died rather inconsiderately, in bed with his mistress, and Frances had to snap into action, moving the body (with the help of the unfortunate mistress and another guest at the house party) to be found more appropriately in his dressing room. At the end of her socially enforced mourning, Frances is moving to Belgravia, although her brother- and sister-in-law are hoping to keep her, and her bank account, at the family estate.

This might seem a lot like Downton Abbey, but it’s not all Julian Fellowes-style manners novel. Nope, our heroine isn’t just doing the Season in style, while guarding her younger sister from fortune hunters. Her new next-door neighbor in Belgravia just happens to be the same houseguest who once helped her move a body, an anonymous letter warns local police to look into Reggie’s death, a mysterious, handsome and wealthy Viscount appears just in time for the season, a series of petty thefts plagues the pre-Season parties, and a man is killed in Frances’ back garden. At first, Frances tries to restrain her curiosity to casual, ladylike queries about who was attending which party, as she quietly ferrets out alibis. But the drama comes closer, and with her outspoken American auntie and her good friends, Frances is on the trail.

One villain is incredibly obvious, to the point where I was completely convinced he was a shiny red herring distracting readers from the actual villain. The other reveal made me literally gasp aloud, so all in all a pretty good mystery.