Rules disposed of!

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales   

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So I dragged my feet reading this. I took so…oo long it wasn’t funny. Jane Austen would cringe is my first thought. My second? Absurdity running amok! My third? Wonderful! 

Mrs Steele does a credible job of aping Mrs Bennett. Oh, and Mr. Steele’s heir is attempting to have him ruled insane so he can claim his property! 

The story line is indeed improbable.  A town called Swampshire! Reports of a couple lost on their way to breakfast in their 59 bedroom mansion By the time they were found they’d perished! And their son Mr. Edmund Croaksworth inherited 8000 pounds a year. Hmm! There’s so much more here that pokes fun at lampooning Regency/Victorian mystery romances. So if you enjoy a rollicking, improbable farce, playing on the rules for living appropriately, as determined by the town’s founder (and the rest of society in these times) then you’ll enjoy this, as our heroine Beatrice Steele breaks them with abandoned regularity. 

Witty, pointing to the sacred cows of the time, with an incisive edge. Indeed you can’t turn the page without another abandoned social more being brought to count.

Ridiculous though this is Beatrice does have a certain panache and a nose for the mysterious! Her secret passion is murder and crime. (Not needlework or other genteel pursuits—which she’s terrible at.) Beatrice has been secretly writing anonymously to the famous Gentleman Detective, Sir Huxley, a successful crime solver for years, giving him her take on the case. Now crime has arrived at Swampshire and Beatrice manages to have her moment … err many moments!

Did I say that Huxley’s assistant, Inspector Vivek Drake appears walking in the forest as the family is making their carriage journey to the Ball at Stabmort Park, home to the leading family (and historically, founder) of Swampshire. They take him up, and on to the ball!

Ok, I’m now a willing convert to Seales’ ridiculously, wonderful mess that Beatrice grapples with in this novel. I don’t think Jane Austen would cringe, she’d applaud it all! As do I!

A Random House invite ARC via NetGalley.                                              

Many thanks to the author and publisher.