Death Sits Down to Dinner

January 18, 2016
Near the start of Arlen’s enjoyable second Edwardian mystery (after 2015’s Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman), Clementine Talbot, the Countess of Montfort, attends a birthday party at the London mansion of Hermione Kingsley, the patroness of England’s largest charity for orphans, for Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who’s turning 39. When a servant discovers Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, Hermione’s oldest and closest friend, lying dead in the dining room, it appears Reginald suffered a heart attack. The subsequent determination of foul play leads Clementine and her trusted housekeeper, Edith Jackson, to do some amateur sleuthing. The close, mutually respectful partnership between Clementine and Edith will remind Dorothy Sayers’s fans of the relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter, his manservant. Arlen does a good job of depicting a period when class distinctions have become blurred by new money and more-relaxed manners. The plot, which includes a slew of red herrings, builds to a startling denouement. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

January 15, 2016
A countess takes time from her lavish social whirl to solve a murder. Clementine Talbot, the Countess of Montfort, thinks her most difficult tasks of the day will be to keep her excellent new cook happy, choose the right jewelry for a dinner party, and steer her husband away from a political argument with the party's guest of honor, Winston Churchill. After dinner, Churchill accidentally interrupts an amateur singer's performance, but that social gaffe is nothing compared to Clementine's discovery of another guest, Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, with a knife thrust through his heart. The dead man is a close friend of the dinner's elderly hostess, Hermione Kingsley, who's quite undone over his stabbing. Despite Clementine's luxurious lifestyle, she's got a head on her shoulders. In fact, she and Edith Jackson, the housekeeper of the Montforts' country estate, teamed up to solve a previous murder (Death of a Dishonourable Gentleman, 2015). The young detective inspector who handles the case warns Clementine to stay out of his business, especially since Churchill has ordered the guests at the disastrous dinner not to speak of it outside their own families. But Clementine's as cagey as she is charming, and as she resumes her social rounds, she's able to winkle out information about a flawed alibi, a missing footman, and Hermione's paid companion, who was unaccounted for just after dinner. And Jackson asks discreet questions among Hermione's servants and the staff of the orphans' home that's Hermione's favorite charity. When the upstairs-downstairs duo uncover evidence of thwarted love and a cruel betrayal, they wonder if Cholmondeley's death involved private revenge or issues of national security, as the clouds of another war with Germany gather. A neatly crafted whodunit that drips with diamonds, titles, and scandals.

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March 1, 2016

Lady Clementine Elizabeth Talbot, the Countess of Montfort, is invited to dinner, along with other fashionable guests, at Miss Hermione Kingsley's house to celebrate Winston Churchill's 39th birthday. Yet a pall is cast on the festivities when one of the gentlemen turns up dead. Having been involved in a previous murder inquiry (Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman), Lady Montfort is warned to stay out of the investigation by both her husband and the Scotland Yard detective assigned to the case. Assisted by her ubercompetent housekeeper, Mrs. Edith Jackson, Lady Montfort blithely ignores her spouse and the good inspector. Espionage, murder, and attempted assassinations are all par for the course. VERDICT Real-life Edwardian personalities abound in this period historical, and the upstairs/downstairs focus delivers a clash of temperaments. This title is bound to appeal to fans of historicals set in this period and of such authors as Rhys Bowen and Ashley Weaver.

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