Engaging!

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Murder in Westminster: A Riveting Regency Historical Mystery (Lady Worthing Mysteries #1) by Vanessa Riley 

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An interesting and puzzling new Regency mystery from Vanessa Riley. I swam about in a maze of questions before deciding to just go with the flow and hope all would be revealed.

Lady Abigail Worthing is wife to absentee sea captain, Captain James Munroe, Lord Worthing 

Here’s the thing, she keeps referring to having saved her husband from Newgate, in doing so she somehow lost or was lost to her sister Dinah, and become Baroness Worthing. I’m no closer to this story—did I miss something, or will all be revealed in the next in the series?

Lady Worthington is a woman of color, a Blackamoor with a Jamaican mother and a Scottish father, and has to be careful, too careful, about where she goes and who she sees. There are those like her godfather Mr. Vaughn who keep waiting for the gift of foresight to blossom. Annoying to Abbie.

This time though she sees, as in really there’s a body, the wife of her neighbor dead on the garden between their properties.

Abbie’s also hiding that she secretly supports William Wilberforce and the Clapham set and has evidence from her husband of the despicable and horrendous circumstances slaves are forced to endure. However Wilberforce’s meetings are constrained, secretive even, due to the uprising in Haiti.

Having helped the magistrate Lord Duncan before, she feels duty bound to assist him in his investigations. If only to throw her own innocence into relief.

But then the bodies begin piling up. She unveils the culprit, but we’re left wondering if that’s all there was.

Meanwhile where is her sister Dinah, what exactly happened to have Abbie married to naval captain James Munroe, and when will her husband return from his voyage? There’s many moving parts. Trying to keep all the people and their relationships straight in my head is a challenge, yet still,

Questions remain!


A Kensington Books ARC via NetGalley.                                              

Many thanks to the author and publisher.


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