With all my heart, I wanted to love everything about this book. Not one, but TWO strong female protagonists! A locked room mystery! Northern English hamlets! Questionable spirit mediums! Brooding moors! Adventure! Laughs! But what starts out with all the right ingredients ends up feeling a little overdone. The prose, while intended as satire, skewers less than it wilts. The characters are dry and flat, and the plot fails to pique in the important ways a mystery should. The reader ends up wading through trite frippery, propelled forward by just enough wit to get them between the punctuated moments where the story's intended effect succeeds in breaking through. What could have been a raucous send-up ends up feeling... well tired, but not, in the end, a total failure. In a genre that has seen more than its fair share of outings, both stellar and lackluster, this cozy-ish mystery has enough bright bits to make for a reasonably entertaining rainy-day read, but probably not a whole lot more.

I fell in love with the cover of this book. This is the third book in the Rachel Savernake series it is just as wonderfully written as books one and two. Martin Edwards is a fantastic author and is able to inject Golden Age mystery writing into his books. He crafts fabulous characters with wonderful plots and beautifully detailed locations that you feel yourself falling into the book as if you're really there and interacting in the murder mystery yourself. I enjoy the characters imperfections as well as their qualities. Rachel is not only beautiful but highly intelligent and is extremely loyal to her staff and doesn't treat them like staff, they are her family. They work like a well-oiled machine. I loved the history that was created as a backdrop for the storyline. This was a extremely enjoyable read and I recommend that readers enjoy books one and two before reading this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the e-ARC.

First I wanted to mention that if you haven't read the other Rachel Savernake mysteries you can still read this book and not be too lost. There may be pieces of her backstory missing, but overall it doesn't effect the tone of the book or keep you from understanding the mystery.

I don't frequently read mystery novels and I did find this to be a delight. I enjoyed the mystery and no I did not get close to solving it, but I liked how all the storylines connected and came together. I enjoyed the multiple mysteries not just the locked room conundrum, but the murders and a spiritualist? Color me intrigued.

The one thing I didn't like is how the author chose to describe Orttile and Nell. Both characters are repeatedly described negatively. The author has nothing kind to say about his own characters and even though Nell is described as a fairly good journalist he basically refers to her as an idiot. He makes her seem like a slobby drunk. It just didn't sit well with me.

Advertised as something for Agatha Christie fans, this book was a poorly executed take on a Christie novel.

A Superlative Series..
The third in this superlative series featuring the forthright sleuth Rachel Savernake. The author once again successfully blends a whodunnit in traditional Golden Age vein with an atmospheric Gothic flavouring and a modern feel. The tale moves along at cracking pace, distributing clues and red herrings aplenty, culminating in a tremendous and cleverly done denouement. Superb.