A Devious Death

October 15, 2017
Money may be the root of all evil, but is it the motive for murder? Julia and Phoebe Renshaw know they must make wealthy marriages to keep the estate of the Earl of Wroxley afloat. But duty is rubbing up against love, especially for Julia, the beautiful elder daughter enamored of a nobleman whose estate is near ruin. The daughters have been invited to visit their cousin Regina Brockhurst, who's just purchased a home with the money she inherited from her father--much to the dismay of her mother, Lady Mandeville, her brother, Hastings, and his wife, Verna, who were left with little to support their pretensions. Phoebe's trusted maid, Eva, and Julia's sulky new maid, Miss Myra Stanley, are greeted by Regina's dear friend Olive Asquith, whom they take for an upper-level servant. But it's not so: Regina and Olive are making do with only a cook and her helper. Regina is mysterious about her plans for her new home, and when her unhappy relatives arrive with the family lawyer, they immediately accuse her of killing her father. The fog of enmity thickens when Regina is found dead in her bed, stabbed with the dowager's hatpin. Phoebe and Eva, no strangers to crime-solving (A Pinch of Poison, 2016, etc.), know that the investigation will mostly be in the hands of Eva's love, Constable Miles Brannock. Regina's family would prefer to believe she was killed by Olive, an apparent outsider whose socialist tendencies belie her wealthy background. As they watch the family's feeble gestures of mourning--Hastings floats around in what appears to be a whiskey-induced stupor, while his mother and wife shed no tears for Regina--the two sleuths devise a clever plan to catch the killer. An unusual twist rooted in the recent horrors of World War I adds interest to a typical country-house mystery.

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October 30, 2017
Maxwell’s well-crafted third Lady and Lady’s Maid mystery featuring Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her maid, Eva Huntford (after 2016’s A Pinch of Poison), shows how class lines were blurred in post-WWI Britain. In August 1919, 20-year-old Phoebe and her elder sister, Julia, are invited by their cousin Regina Brockhurst to visit their relative’s new home, High Head Lodge, and help remodel the rundown manse into what Regina vaguely describes as a “gathering place for today’s enlightened intellectuals.” But a confrontation ensues when Regina’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law show up with a lawyer in tow. Regina’s recently deceased father, Lord Mandeville, left all his money to his daughter and nothing but an empty title to his son. When someone stabs Regina to death with a hat pin, suspicion falls on the members of her immediate family, but Phoebe and Eva soon discover that others stood to gain from Regina’s demise. Maxwell artfully portrays the personal dynamics of English society at the time, and readers will hope to see more of the endearing Phoebe and Eva. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency.