Death Comes to the Nursery (A Kurland St. Mary Mystery)
In this seventh Kurland St. Mary mystery, Waterloo hero Sir Robert Kurland and his wife Lucy, the rector’s daughter, are expecting their second child. They hire an additional nursery maid to help with eighteen-month-old Ned and be available when the new baby arrives. The new maid, Polly, is the cousin of the regular nursery maid, Agnes. Polly is beautiful and charming, causing dissension among the young men of the area. When she is found murdered in a ditch—and turns out not to be Agnes’s cousin at all—the game is afoot.
Robert, the local magistrate, and Lucy travel to London and interview a variety of characters connected to the theater and to the genteel world. They sift through much information as they try to find out who Polly really was and why she was killed. Danger follows them back to peaceful, bucolic Kurland St. Mary. It threatens those they care about most before aid comes from an unlikely direction.
This is an entertaining Regency mystery. It moves faster at the beginning and the end, with the middle London section not as compelling. Fans of Robert and Lucy will enjoy meeting them again, and new readers can start here. The book stands alone nicely, although I’d suggest going back and at least reading the first in the series, Death Comes to the Village, to see the beginning of Robert and Lucy’s relationship.
