Review: A Mansion for Murder

A Mansion for Murder by Frances Brody
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first Kate Shackleton novel, although I have two other novels on my TBR pile. There isn't much backstory to get to grips with and I found it easy to read as a standalone novel.

Kate receives a mysterious letter, addressed to her married name of Mrs Gerald Shackleton which suggests the letter may relate to her late husband as most correspondence is now addressed to her personally. The letter requests a meeting on Saturday close to Milner Field mansion in the mill town of Saltaire. But when Kate goes to meet her correspondent it is only to find that he has died that very afternoon, drowned in the reservoir attached to the mill.

At first Kate resists getting involved in the investigation into Ronnie Creswell's death, but when the owner of the mansion (and the mill) requests her assistance on a multi-faceted front she can't help but be drawn in. Mr Whittaker is concerned that the police suspect one of his workers, David Fairburn, of killing Ronnie and wants Kate to recommend a good lawyer. He also suspects industrial espionage, a lucrative contract for the supply of cloth which has automatically renewed every year has suddenly been put out to tender and he has been advised by the purchasing manager that another bid has been received which is clearly based on his own costings, he wants Kate to engage her assistant Mr Sykes to go undercover in the mill to work out who is selling his information to his rivals. Finally, as if that weren't enough, Ronnie's mother was the housekeeper at the mansion, she's resigned muttering about the curse on anyone who lives there, and he wants Kate to recommend a new one to help him get the mansion ready for the upcoming sale at auction (glossing over the house's sad history of deaths). Kate suggests her own housekeeper, Mrs Sugden is ideally placed.

During the investigation Kate learns that the Estate Manager is clearly living the life of Reilly (BTW who is/was Reilly?) drinking expensive wines from the mansion's cellars and having parties while the family are away. The family recently hosted a fancy dress party at the mansion, after which one of the maids disappeared, along with lots of the family silver.

I did enjoy this book, it reminded me very much of the Maisie Dodds series, so much so that on occasion I was confused by the references to living in Leeds, but with less of an emphasis on the main character being involved in big events of the time.

One minor niggle was that there seemed to be some leaping to conclusions towards the end and I couldn't quite see how Kate and her associates made the connections, maybe because I was reading the book in between other things and not giving it my entire attention.

Anyway, this has definitely spurred me on to start the series.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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