Lady Darling Inquires After a Killer

Lady Bridgerton meets Miss Marple meets The Thursday Murder Club in this charming, Victorian-set mystery series from bestselling and prolific author Colleen Gleason (who also writes historical mysteries as Colleen Cambridge).The widowed marchioness of Darling has successfully married off all of her children, and her son’s wife is the new marchioness—making her the dowager, and giving her absolutely no responsibilities. As a woman who was not born into the peerage, but, against the mores of Victorian London society wed Lord Darling in a love match thirty years ago, Lady Darling chafes at the restrictions of the gentility and is looking forward to her “retirement” to the country—at least until the grandchildren come along.Unfortunately, fate has other plans for her. When an old friend implores her to sponsor her daughter into society, Lady Darling agrees. Not long after she commences with this project, Lady Darling and her charge, Miss Bedwith, attend a dinner party where a man is found dead.Lady Darling, an aficionado of Sherlock Holmes (and friend of Arthur Conan Doyle) and Wilkie Collins’s work, dives into the investigation simply because she can.During her investigation, she employs the assistance of her housekeeper and butler—the Josephs, who are also her close friends (another impropriety! being friends with servants!)—as well as her favorite modiste, Monsieur Claude—to help her track down clues to the killer. When the investigation takes her into the dingy streets of Seven Dials, she encounters a mysterious and dangerous man who seems to know an awful lot about her. Maybe too much. Still, even at her so-called advanced age of fifty, Lady Darling finds him interesting and titillating. But can she trust him?A charming, thrilling, witty romp of a mystery series, the Lady Darling books will find fans with readers of historical cozies, Bridgerton, and The Thursday Murder Club.