Murder at Madame Tussauds is a delightfully spooky and creative mystery that follows the museum detectives as they track down the killer of a night watchman.

This was a great read! It was equal parts creepy and enjoyable, I would recommend it to fans of the Victorian detective genre.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you’re fan of Sherlock Holmes stories or Agatha Christie’s mysteries then this book got you covered.

I didn’t know that this book belongs in a series called ‘Museum Mysteries’ but this can be read as stand alone.

It has been such and entertaining, satisfying read! The plot is fast paced and eventful. The main characters are very likeable and realistic and I liked the determination in which they handled the case. The plot itself has been an easy to figure but for some reason it didn’t put me off as there was still a lot of action going on that kept me reading.

Generally it’s a very well-written historical mystery! I, for sure, will look for the rest of the books in the series!

London, 1896. Private Investigators Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton are hired by Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. A new nightwatchman, Eric, is found dead with his head caught off. He is posed in the museum’s French Revolution guillotine exhibit. His security team partner, Walter, is missing. The bumbling police decide on an obvious conclusion to the Murder at Madame Tussauds. They assume that Walter killed Eric and left town. But Daniel and Abigail think something more complicated is at play here. Could a recent string of bank robberies be related?

I really enjoyed the build-up of the case when Daniel and Abigail were investigating Eric and Walter. But then the plot slowed down considerably until the rousing conclusion. For that reason, Murder at Madame Tussauds is not my favorite book in this series. I liked the last book, Murder at the Natural History Museum, much more. For this entry, 3 stars.

Thanks to Allison & Busby and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Murder at Madame Tussauds
By: Jim Eldridge

Allison and Busby

General Fiction(Adult)/Historical Fiction/Mystery and Thrillers

Publish Date June 17, 2021

#MurderatMadameTussauds#NetGalley

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I am very grateful that I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.

I gave this book 3.5 stars. I wasn't a fan of the ending otherwise it would have been a 4 star.

This book has a lot of characters but it is easy to figure out. I didn't like how the chapters would jump from one set of characters to another without any warning or a start of a new chapter. Otherwise the chapters and story line flowed well.

This book starts out with the death of a night watchman at the wax museum of Madame Tussauds. His death was very gross with having his head chopped off. There is a missing night watchman who happened to be the deceases partner. The owner of the museum has hired two private investigators to help solve the murder. Scotland Yard is not happy of the involvement of these two people.

I enjoyed the mystery content and a little bit about the times with a splash of history.

There also happens to be a series of bank robbery's in the area.

Are the two connected or are they two different crimes?

Thanks to NetGalley along with Allison and Busby for providing me with a free advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
This is now my 3rd book that I have read in Jim Eldrige's Museum Mystery series, and once again the author has delivered a highly entertaining, fast-paced and enjoyable mystery, this time involving Madam Tussauds Wax Museum in London. The author has a great pairing of former Scotland Yard Detective, Daniel Wilson, along with his now fiancee Abigail Fenton, a world renown Archeologist. Together these two have been solving mysteries surrounding murders at some of Englands most well-known museum. Here they are called into the case by the owner of the wax museum, much to the dismay of the higher ups at Scotland Yard, who are angry and yet jealous of the publicity and credit that the "Museum Detectives" receive instead of Scotland Yard.
Here we have the beheading death of a night watchman at Madam Tussauds, and the official investigation leads in one direction, while Wilson and Fenton do not buy the official investigation. Oh, we have multiple murders of folks with connections to the "Wax Business" along with a string of high profile banks being broken into and robbed of most in their safe deposit boxes. Are the cases connected and, if so, how are they related since nothing seems to make sense.
A rollicking good tale filled with a lot of background on Madam Tussaud, the wax museum business, Florence Nightingale and a host of characters that keep you guessing until the very end.
If you like historical mysteries, and page-turning books that keep you up at night, then this is the author for you, and Murder at Madame Tussauds is a perfect book for you.

Murder at Madame Tussauds is the sixth book in the fun historical mystery series Museum Mysteries by Jim Eldridge. I started this series on book five, and both that one and this stood alone just perfectly fine. So if you're a fan of historical mysteries, jump right in and join the "Museum Detectives" as they investigate their latest case.

Victorian London, 1896. Madame Tussauds, the incredibly popular wax museum, opens one morning to find one of their nightwatchmen decapitated and set up in an eerie tableau in the museum's Chamber of Horrors. John Tussaud calls in Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton, who are called the "Museum Detectives", to investigate. At first it's believed that the other nightwatchman killed his co-worker and vanished, but that theory is put to rest when he is later discovered encased in wax at Madame Tussauds! Meanwhile, their friend Inspector John Feathers is investigating a series of bank robberies. Scotland Yard does NOT like Daniel and Abigail, since they are being compared to our detectives unfavorably, but Feathers involves them on the sly in the robberies investigation. Can the murders at Tussauds possibly be related to bank robberies? It's sure beginning to appear that way!

This was a fun installment in this popular series. It wasn't difficult to figure out who did what in regards to the crimes, but it was still entertaining to watch our leads figure it all out. I really enjoy the relationship between Daniel and Abigail. Daniel formerly worked with Scotland Yard and was involved in investigating Jack the Ripper. Abigail, on the other hand, is a well-know Egyptologist. It seems an odd pairing, but it works. They buck Victorian mores and live together unmarried. There were some characters that were an interesting addition to the story - particularly Marion, the lovesick young niece of John Feathers, who has a thing for Daniel, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes, THAT one. He wants Abigail to lead an Egyptian expedition for him, hoping to find some sort of divine cure for his ill wife. So we had all sorts of different stories going on, but they all coalesced into one fine tale. I'll be looking forward to the next adventures of our Museum Detectives!

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley. I received no compensation for my review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are entirely my own.

This is the sixth book in the delightful series from Jim Eldridge set in the last years of Queen Victoria's reign, and featuring a private investigator partnership between Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton. The pair are so mismatched that they make a delightful fit, if that makes any sense. Former policeman Daniel is short, stocky and of solid working class London stock, while Abigail is of more 'noble birth',  tall, elegant, and an expert in archaeology, particularly that of the classical world. As you can see from the banner above, they have worked their way around the major museums of England, but now they are called to a slightly less academic venue - Madame Tussaud's waxworks on Baker Street.

One of the night watchmen is found decapitated, his body (and head) posed next to the instrument of death that caused Anna Maria "Marie" Tussaud née Grosholtz to fear for her own life during the French Revolution - the guillotine. Wilson and Fenton immediately smell a rather large and malodorous rodent. The dead man - Eric Dudgeon - and his fellow watchman, Walter Bagshot, were lifelong friends, and former army colleagues. Now Dudgeon is dead and Bagshot is missing. Even stranger is the fact that some months earlier the previous watchmen, Donald Bruin and Steven Patterson, both left at the same time and, within days, Dudgeon and Bagshot arrived at the exhibition asking if there were any vacancies for security staff.

Meanwhile, Eldridge has introduced some real life characters (pictured above) - Prime Minister the Marquess of Salisbury, Sir Matthew White Ridley the Home Secretary, and William Melville head of the Special Branch. The men are concerned about a series of successful bank robberies, each of which has been carried out by the robbers tunneling into the bank vault from the cellar of an adjoining building. The sums taken have been eye-wateringly huge - so much so that the government is concerned about a run on the banks. Dedicated Sherlockians, when hearing about the robbers' method, will raise an eyebrow and say, "A-hah - The Red Headed League!" *

The murder plot becomes more twisted, when a young man, working on the basis that if he can scare his girlfriend she will succumb to his advances, hides with her in a Tussaud's broom cupboard at closing time, and then sneaks out into The Chamber of Horrors. What they find is a genuine horror rather than a wax version, and all thoughts of dalliance go out of the window. Abigail, meanwhile, is courted (in a gentlemanly way) by none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, who wants her to lead an expedition to excavate an obscure group pf pyramids in Egypt. Both she and Daniel have their lives threatened, however; Abigail by an obsessed young woman who lusts after Daniel, and Daniel himself by a powerful and seemingly untouchable crime boss, Gerald Carr.


This shouldn't be dismissed as 'comfort reading'. Yes, we know what we are going to get - the atmospheric late Victorian setting, the lovely human chemistry between Daniel and Abigail, and absence of moral ambiguity and the certainty that good will prevail. Any genuine reader of fiction - and in particular, crime fiction - will know that, rather in the manner of Ecclesiastes chapter III , there is a time for everything; there is a time for the dark despair of Derek Raymond, there is a time for the intense psychological dramas of Lisa Jewell, and a time for workaday police procedurals by writers like Peter James and Mark Billingham. There is also a time for superbly crafted historical crime fiction which takes us far away in time and space, and allows us to escape into an - albeit imaginary - world which provides balm and healing to our present woes. Murder at Madame Tussaud's is one such book. It is published by Allison & Busby and is available now.

*The Red-Headed League" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which Sherlock Holmes takes the case of a businessman who feels that he's been duped. A small business owner named Wilson tells Holmes how a man named Spaulding convinced him to take a job with The Red-Headed League. The League pays Wilson to copy out the Encyclopedia Britannica in longhand. Wilson does this for seven weeks, until the League is disbanded. Holmes realizes that Spaulding just wanted Wilson out of the shop so that he could dig a tunnel into the nearby bank.

I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and murder mysteries, so this is a perfect book, in fact I love this whole series. I hope it will be a very long one. Wilson and Fenton make a great couple as well as detectives and I really got into their personalities. I just love this series.

Waxy shenanigans and murderous greediness make for thrilling & upbeat entertainment in Jim Eldridge's latest addition to his marvellous Murder Museum Series involving once again the delightful duo composed of Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton, the Emma Steel & John Seed of late Victorian England starring in a cleverly and fiendishly plotted whodunit full of bloody surprises, great historical details and a cast of very colorful and often very sinister characters.
Pure fictional escapism and one rollicking summer read to be enjoyed of course without any moderation whatsoever!
I just can't wait for the next installment!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Allison&Busby for this terrific ARC

1896 Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton become involved when a newly employed nightwatchman, Eric Dudgeon, is found dead at Madame Tussauds. As the second man, Walter Bagshot, has disappeared the police believe he is the guilty person. But Detective Inspector John Feather does not agree, but he has been assigned to the series of bank robbery cases.
An enjoyable and well-written historical mystery, with a likeable style of writing and good plotting. Also with its amiable characters. A good addition to the series, which can easily be read as a standalone story.
An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mine

This was just great
Loved the twists and turns here and it kept me guessing which I loved

A fantastic holiday read

I am a huge fan of historical mysteries, but somehow had never heard of Jim Eldridge’s Museum Detectives series, set in the late 1800s, and featuring ex-Scotland Yard detective Daniel Wilson and his partner, archeologist Abigail Fenton. So I was happy to receive a review copy of the latest title in the series, Murder at Madame Tussauds. And I’m glad I did.

As the story opens, a real beheaded body is found in with all the wax ones in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Daniel and Abigail have made a bit of a name for themselves solving murders in museums, so John Tussaud, who now runs his great-grandmother’s museum, calls on them to investigate. The dead man is one of Madame Tussaud’s two night watchmen, and the other is missing, so it seems obvious to Scotland Yard’s Inspector Jarrett that he’s the culprit. But is that really true? More dead bodies give some clues…

Meanwhile, there’s also an outbreak of bank burglaries happening in London. Clever criminals have been breaking in to bank vaults from the cellars of neighboring stores. The crimes have been happening in wealthy areas so a lot of money, and perhaps even more importantly, a lot of private papers, have gone missing. Are the two crime sprees connected? Although they are on the outs with senior officers at Scotland Yard, Daniel and Abigail still manage to work with their friend, Inspector Feather, to figure out what’s going on.

I very much enjoyed Murder at Madame Tussaud’s – the plot was engaging, and I also got to painlessly learn a bit about Madame Tussaud’s and the history of wax-figure making. Since I came in on the sixth book, though, I’m a bit uncertain as to the origin of Daniel and Abigail’s relationship, which seemed to me to be unusual (openly living together, without being married) for the time. The living-together part didn’t bother me personally, but it did seem to be a bit of an anachronism. (Perhaps if I get a chance to read some of the earlier books in the series, that part will make more sense.) All-in-all, though, this was a fun and quick read. And please keep in mind that I don’t give many five-star reviews, and so my four-star rating here is a solid “read this book” recommendation. And my thanks to Allison & Busby and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

I love a good mystery book and this book just hit the spot!!! Jim Eldridge does a good job with twists and turns that make you guessing till you finally know who committed the murders.

Full disclosure, this is the sixth installment in a series I haven’t read. But I honestly don’t think my opinion would change if I had read the prior ones.

Set in late 1800s London, Daniel (a former Scotland Yard detective) & Abigail (a renowned Egyptologist) are private detectives who live together (I was rather skeptical about that for the time period). There are two cases here which turn out to be interrelated (murder and robbery).

While the writing itself was fine (a bit simplistic) and the plot was OK (a bit complicated and far fetched in some spots), it was how Daniel took center stage with Abigail playing more of a minor role that bugged me. She should have been off excavating (what she loved) rather than playing house with Daniel and serving as his sidekick.

My thanks to #Allison&Busby and #NetGalley for providing me the free early arc for review. The opinions are strictly my own.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Allison & Busby for this Advanced Reader Copy and the opportunity to review “Murder at Madame Tussauds” by Jim Eldridge. All opinions are my own.

A killing’s already taken place at the beginning of our book, the sixth in the series, this one set in 1896. One of the nightwatchmen has a missing head, poor man, and it appears that he was done in by the wax museum’s own guillotine. But Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton find out that’s not true. Scotland Yard also think it’s an open and shut case with the other nightwatchman being the culprit. Daniel and Abby soon realize that what’s going on is way more complicated. There’s those bank robberies all over town, for instance.

Readers will have the “superintendent who doesn’t like them” trope to deal with as in earlier books. It does have its uses, I suppose. They do have a friend at the Yard who gets to feed them information, as he gets it from them.

Our story takes on another dimension with more people, a young boy and a mysterious woman. Are they the ones doing the killings? It looks like we’re supposed to think they are. Another body turns up, encased in wax. A chamber of horrors, indeed. Where’s Vincent Price when you need him? But could this be just an attempt by a business rival to make Madame Tussauds look bad?

Oh, yes, our side story – Abigail’s offered the chance (by Arthur Conan Doyle, no less) to return to Egypt for an archeological expedition. Daniel urges her to take it.

Pretty soon, everybody’s in danger in this book. Lots of threads to follow, maybe too many. I’d like a more straightforward story. Daniel is putting two and two together, but our plodding superintendent doesn’t want to believe him of course for the usual, tedious reasons. There’s a rescue operation to finish everything up. And a long story that has to be explained away, for not for the public reasons. “Murder at Madame Tussauds” will no doubt be enjoyed by fans of the series who follow the fortunes of Daniel and Abby, but there are some tedious parts (don’t like scenes from the “other side’s” point of view, for instance), and it lacks the panache of earlier books.

Another excellent story in this series I love.
I'm always fascinated by the story of the different Museums and learned something about was working and the story of Tussaud's
Abigail and Daniel are as interesting as usual and the characters are well developed.
The plot is tightly knitted, flows and it's full of twists and turns. It kept me guessing and I liked the solution.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Murder at Madame Tussauds is the first of Jim Eldridge's Museum Detective series, but it won't be the last.

This is a very evocative portrayal of late Victorian London, complete with Hansoms and fog, and a terrible crime that needs solving.

A thoroughly enjoyable read with a fantastic conclusion.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy. I'll be hunting down the earlier books in the series now.

The sixth book in the Museum Mystery series is just as enjoyable as the previous books.

When one of the night watchmen at Madame Tussaud’s is found dead and the other watchman missing, it seems to be a pretty clear cut case. However, Daniel and Abigail have become more notorious for solving cases like this, ones that are more complex than they appear, so they’re looking into this one and they soon realize there’s a much deeper mystery.

This is another well plotted mystery and while I think it could be read as a stand-alone, I think you appreciate the characters much more. I liked the subplot of a possible return to the archeology world for Abigail, even if some of her backstory continues to be completely implausible since the book is set in 1896.

I’m looking forward to the next book!

Utterly fabulous! I just loved this so much….it’s a lighthearted, compelling, unputdownable type read.

Wilson and Fenton make a wonderful couple, and pair of detectives, I really got into their lives and personalities, and just absolutely loved them.

If you like a bloody good fun murder mystery, then this is for you. It is the 6th in the series and I’ve not read the others, but this is completely stand alone - I don’t feel like I missed any backstory.

My thanks to Netgalley and Allison & Busby for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This mystery makes for a fun escape for a while. It has everything to make it a classic. Murder, daring bank robberies, the chamber of horrors in wax works museum and all taking place shortly after the Jack the Ripper murders.
The characters are private detective partners, Daniel and Abigail, who have already solved a few recent high profile mysteries, to the annoyance of Scotland Yard and how they were unfavorable compared in the news papers.
Even though I hadn't read any of the prior stories of this series, I had no difficulty connecting with the characters and I look forward to reading the other adventures of Daniel and Abigail.

Thank you to Netgalley and Allison & Busby for the opportunity to discover this series by Jim Eldridge.