Below Stairs #8
I was entranced by book 7 in this series, Speculations in Sin, and am now a hard core fan. If you are a fan of the late, great Victoria Thompson, this might also be the series for you. Set in Victorian London, the main character, Kat Holloway, is a cook for a wealthy family. While I have read many Victorian mysteries, this is the rare series that focuses on the servants rather than the aristocrats upstairs. They are the minor characters, while the downstairs characters – cooks, maids, delivery men, urchin boys – are the main feature.
Kat is the single mother of a daughter, Grace, who lives with a good friend of hers while she works. She’s only able to see Grace once a week on her day out. As a reader, you feel the hard pull every time she leaves her daughter to go back to work. The rest of her heart is occupied by one Daniel McAdam, an undercover policeman who is paying off a dangerous debt. As the book opens, Daniel tells her he’ll be on an assignment for an unspecified period, and they can have absolutely no contact while it’s going on.
Kat is not putting up with this situation, however, and leverages her network of street urchins, Daniel’s son, and other friends to keep a light watch on the house in Belgrave Square where he’s to be working. The wheels are frequently greased by the pastries she prepares and shares out judiciously. She also recruits an old friend, Hannah, to get a job in the household as a maid and keep an eye on things. The two women are able to meet up fairly often, so Kat is able to get a proof of life report, at least.
The case Daniel is working on seems to be following up on the activities of the Fenians, who were using a dynamite bombing campaign to try and secure Home Rule for Ireland. The house where Daniel is working is apparently a nexus of the organization.
To me the strength of this book was the renewed friendship between Hannah and Kat – Hannah is a con artist, basically, but she’s worked as a maid in fancy houses. When she and Kat meet, she’s in deep disguise, sometimes so deep Kat doesn’t recognize her at first. The way the two women illustrate the way society operated in 1880s London from the point of view of the “regular” person is very well done.
There’s also a subplot involving some poison pen letters, giving Kat a legitimate excuse to snoop around, especially as the letters seem to have originated in the very block where Daniel is undercover. To me, the mystery part of the story, which was fine, was the least of it. What is so great about these books are the characters, all of them fully and memorably delineated, the time period, and the snappy pace Ashley keeps up throughout the book. These are brisk, fun, satisfying reads. — Robin Agnew