The Mitford Secret (The Mitford Murders, 6)
Louisa Sullivan, former maid for the Mitford family and current private detective, has been invited to stay at the Mitford home in Chatsworth by the youngest daughter, Deborah, for the 1941 Christmas holidays. Though unhappy to leave her husband Guy, home-guard member and head of their detective agency, for a few days, Louisa does not miss the shrill air raids, bombings, and need for carrying gas masks on the streets of London that threaten her and her young daughter, five-year-old Maisie.
Soon after arriving, Louisa is pressed into applying her detective skills when an older woman visitor is found dead: Mrs. Hoole has returned after 25 years, seeking information about her friend, Joan Dorries, another maid who disappeared in 1916.
The Mitford Secret is the sixth and final book in the Mitford Murders series that began in 2017. The books are based on historical texts and memoirs from the eccentric and highly political six daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale—Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah.
Author of companion volumes to her Uncle Julian’s Downton Abbey series, Jessica Fellowes is a well-regarded author of upstairs/downstairs society. Though redolent of life among the landed gentry and their servants, The Mitford Secret is slow to get going. Readers become acquainted with the characters over 80-plus pages before even a whiff of the secret materializes. But clever red herrings add spice, and layered revelations top off the bouquet. Striking this reader in particular are the callousness and impatience of the to-the-manor-born toward children as well as staff. A tragic death and the need to investigate it mustn’t interrupt the workings of the household or tarnish the reputation of the landholder. Indeed.
A full-bodied blend of manners and mystery.
