My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Introducing chef-sleuth Nell Drury in the first of a delightful series of 1920's traditional country house mysteries.
1925. The fashionable Bright Young Things from London have descended on Wychbourne Court, the Kentish stately home of Lord and Lady Ansley, for an extravagant fancy dress ball followed by a midnight Ghost Hunt - and Chef Nell Drury knows she's in for a busy weekend. What she doesn't expect to encounter is sudden, violent death.
When a body is discovered in the minstrels' gallery during the Ghost Hunt, Nell finds herself caught up in the police investigation which follows. As the darker side of the Roaring Twenties emerges and it becomes increasingly clear that at least one person present that night has a sinister secret to hide, Nell determines to unmask the killer among them. Could the Wychbourne Ghosts hold the key to the mystery?
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Now, the book did feel promising in the beginning, but somewhere along the way when Miss Marple ... Eh I mean Nell started to investigate the case because the lady of the house trusts her to be able to talk to the servants, the family, and guest and find out the truth about the murder. Yeah, because the chef is the obvious person to go to when someone has been murdered. Anyway, the book was OK, in the beginning, thanks to the list of characters, in the beginning, was it not so hard to know who was who. The story seemed interesting and I was curious to see who would get killed.
However, the book started to go downhill somewhere along the way as Nell was trying to find out where everyone was during the murder. And, the ghost thing? It was just ridiculous. It should perhaps have been seen as a funny thing with the Lord Ansley's sister being quite positive about the house being haunted by a legion of ghosts. It wasn't!
By the time the inspector at the end revealed the truth had I already abandoned this book mentally and was just reading to find out who the killer was. Would I read more books in this series? No, Nell was not an interesting person to read about, too dull for my taste and she felt not very substantial, which I felt is the big problem with most of the characters in the book. They just didn't come to life.
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