{"id":4443,"date":"2022-05-27T06:25:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T13:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2022-05-27T06:25:49","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T13:25:49","slug":"catherine-lloyd-miss-morton-and-the-english-house-party-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/catherine-lloyd-miss-morton-and-the-english-house-party-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Lloyd: Miss Morton and The English House Party Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This charming first in a series has some kissing cousins \u2013 it bears a resemblance to Dianne Freeman\u2019s Lady Harleigh series and to Darcie Wilde\u2019s Rosalind Thorne books.\u00a0 Set in the same time period, 1830\u2019s Britain, this book has a vivid, fast paced story telling style that makes it difficult to put down.\u00a0 Young Lady Caroline Morton has been disgraced by her father\u2019s bankruptcy and suicide, so she\u2019s left her aunt\u2019s household and is \u2013 gasp \u2013 earning a wage as the companion of Mrs. Frogerton, a forthright, wealthy widow who is sending her daughter, Dorothy, out into the wilds of the London \u201cseason.\u201d<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t say I haven\u2019t seen this type of set up before \u2013 even Ngaio Marsh\u2019s 1939 novel Death in a White Tie<\/em> features a deb who is being assisted through her paces \u2013 but in Catherine Lloyd\u2019s capable hands there are new aspects to discover.\u00a0 For one thing, despite Lady Caroline\u2019s pedigree and connections, Dorothy is reluctant to take her advice.\u00a0 But when Caroline\u2019s aunt, Lady Eleanor Greenwood, invites Caroline and by extension her employer and her daughter, to a house party honoring her daughter Mabel\u2019s birthday, even Dorothy can see it might be nice to make some connections before the start of the season.<\/p>\n

The three women set out to the countryside where they are greeted politely but a trifle frostily by the family. Caroline\u2019s main goal is to visit with her sister, Sarah, who still lives in their aunt\u2019s household.\u00a0 Mabel has included an odd mix of people for her birthday ball, and some of the folks she\u2019s included are the grown versions of Lady Eleanor\u2019s \u201ccharity children\u201d who have made their way through the Greenwood nursery to employment.\u00a0 Lord Greenwood had agreed to this despite Lady Eleanor\u2019s objections, so the odd house party, ranging from men who now work at sea or at a dairy are mixing with an Earl who, it turns out, was once engaged to Caroline.<\/p>\n

The whole party is further complicated by the disappearance of the butler, so the household is at sixes and sevens.\u00a0 When the butler is discovered wandering confused in the cellar with a possible concussion, Caroline\u2019s curiosity is not only piqued, but she also tries to figure out why this has happened to him.\u00a0 She finds two unlikely and delightful allies.\u00a0 One is Mrs. Frogerton herself, whose lack of pretense and frank way of looking at the facts make her a perfect assistant in solving a crime, and the other is Dr. Harris, new to the district, a bit on the rude side, and as forthright as Mrs. Frogerton.<\/p>\n

Both of these characters breath life and immediacy into the novel which turns out, despite its fairly light tone, to have some dark threads beneath it with a complicated resolution that leaves the reader with some ambiguity.\u00a0 Normally that kind of things drives me nuts, but it made sense as far as this story goes.\u00a0 The resolution was in line with the tone of the entire book and fit into the context of the time period.<\/p>\n

I truly enjoyed the way Lloyd writes and tells a story \u2013 there\u2019s no let up from start to finish, and she not only has a way with character, she has a way with atmosphere.\u00a0 As there are eventually two murders to be resolved, this is a welcome skill on her part.\u00a0 This is a great kick off to a new series, and I finished the book wanting to know more about Lady Caroline, Mrs. Frogerton, and the rude Dr. Harris.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This charming first in a series has some kissing cousins \u2013 it bears a resemblance to Dianne Freeman\u2019s Lady Harleigh series and to Darcie Wilde\u2019s Rosalind Thorne books.\u00a0 Set in the same time period, 1830\u2019s Britain, this book has a vivid, fast paced story telling style that makes it difficult to put down.\u00a0 Young Lady … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[830,836,831,833,10,835,162,832,834],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1830s-england","tag-british-upper-class","tag-catherine-lloyd","tag-confused-butler","tag-historical","tag-judgy-relatives","tag-kensington-books","tag-miss-morton-and-the-english-house-party-murder","tag-rude-doctor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4455,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions\/4455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}