Review: Lady Holme

Lady Holme by G.J. Bellamy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Sophie Burgoyne's employment and typing agency is doing well, as is her secret work for the police. She and her team go undercover at a London casino to gather more information about the drug dealing on the premises (funny to think that opium and cocaine weren't illegal until 1920) and suspicions of passing of counterfeit money. When Sophie picks up a matchbox left by one of the guests it references an establishment in Lymington, which ties into information the police have received about potential smuggling along the Hampshire coast and an explosion out at sea.

Deducing that anyone involved in wholesale smuggling is probably using local caves or inlets and would need an area of isolation with access to large storage facilities Sophie suspects that the smugglers are using a country house in the area and highlights Lady Holme, a beautiful Tudor mansion home to Lord and Lady Hazlett, as a likely suspect.

Lord Hazlett hasn't left Lady Holme for nearly forty years, despite his wife's protests. When he refuses yet again to go to London for a society event he placates Lady Hazlett by offering to throw a house party for friends and family. Of course Burgoyne's Agency would be ideally placed to provide additional maids to help out at the party.

The party has barely started when one of the guests is murdered, but with so many secrets flying around will Sophie and her team ever be able to solve the crime?

This felt more disjointed than the first book. The counterfeit currency was mentioned at the start of the book and then never mentioned again until the very end when it conveniently tied into the other plots. There was a secret society which Lord Hazlett had crossed (hence being forced to stay at Lady Holme for forty years), but I don't think we ever found out why.

Also the epilogue seemed to tie off lots of loose plot strands (like HEAs) as if it was the final book in the series, but then things were left wide open for Sophie on a personal front.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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