3.5 ⭐️ A nice little murder mystery from 1930s, the Golden Age Crime era. The several different threads did keep me interested and I really wanted to know how were they all going to come together.
Rachel Savernake and her entourage plus most of the of the others characters were colourful and I could certainly picture them from being from that era - the ladies wearing those satin gowns and the man in suits and hats.
I felt that the plot gave ideas for so many different endings but somehow the outcome came totally out of the blue and I felt a little "what?! really?!". Even with the clues in the end I just didn't fell satisfied with the big reveal. I will read the other books of the series though!

What fantastic written book
I have not read Fallow Court, but did not make any difference to me reading this
Engrossed from the beginning
It's full of suspence, drama and intrigue
liked how the characters started to intertwine as the plot thickened
then when it all starts to disentangle
Well, I never saw that coming.

Thank you netgalley, Martin Edwards and Head of Zeus for allowing me to read and review this book

Martin Edwards writes a golden age of crime style historical mystery series featuring the enigmatic and reclusive Rachel Savernake, introduced in Gallows Court, following it up with this complex and intriguing tale. It begins with Rachel hoping to prevent the murder of a ghost when she boards the London Necropolis Company's funeral train. However, having returned from Tangiers for the funeral of his mother, Gilbert Payne, posing as Bertram Jones, refuses Rachel's offer of help, all too resigned to his fate. The Clarion reporter Jacob Flint has been attending the murder trial of door-to-door salesman, Clive Danskin, the verdict assumed to be a foregone conclusion and the media salivating over the upcoming guilty verdict and the hanging that will surely follow. However, the defence pull a rabbit out of the hat with a last minute alibi and witness turning up to save Danskin.

Rachel lives in the large house, Gaunt House, in London with the loyal Truelove family, Cliff, Martha and Hetty, they are far more than servants, their long history together ensures they are more like family. Flint encounters the criminologist Leonora Dobell, obsessed with murderers, trials and miscarriages of justice, asking to meet Rachel, she wishes to talk of murder with Rachel. Reggie Vickers who had gone to Rachel hoping she could save Gilbert, is now running scared, unwilling to divulge more information. As Flint acquaints himself with Leonora Dobell's books on crime and murderers, he is warned off his line of investigations by Inspector Oakes. He is curious about the exclusive den of vice and iniquities, The Clandestine, which leads to him being framed for murder. Rachel finds herself invited to the strange gathering of those who had just managed to escape the gallows by the skin of their teeth at Mortmain Hall.

As further murder takes place at Mortmain, Rachel has her work cut out to get to the bottom of what connects a string of murders, Flint finds himself with the biggest story of his life but unable to write about it. Unusually, at the end of the novel, Martin Edwards writes up the details present in the story that gives clues to the truth of what occurs, although it is all rather too twisted at times for me, some might say too far fetched! However, this is an entertaining historical crime mystery that hints of a shadowy organisation acting with impunity, with their own agenda for the nation. This is for those who love their historical mysteries written in the style of classic golden age of crime. Many thanks to Head of Zeus for an ARC.

An intricately woven plot set in the 1930s

Mortmain Hall continues the adventures of Rachel Savernake and Jacob Flint, begun in the novel Gallows Court. Rachel and her trusted staff are again embroiled in a murder mystery, this time centring around a group of people who have ‘got away with murder’, with the help of the crime reporter Jacob Flint, they leave London for the dramatic east coast of Yorkshire to uncover the truth.

I felt that the plot took a little time to come together, we begin in the middle of the drama, where the opening character’s life is at stake. I did love the use of the Necropolis Railway as a setting for this, however I was confused for the first few chapters. Once the action truly began and I was confident with the characters, the plot moved swiftly and logically.

The book uses multiple points of view within each chapter, which again can be a little disconcerting, especially if the book is put down and then taken up again at a later time. The characters themselves are very well described and well rounded. The writing is a touch flowery for my taste; I am quite well read in Golden Age Crime, which I felt this was an homage to, but there were several occasions where I had to look up a term or reference used to describe a character or scene.

I very much enjoyed the plot and the denouement was especially dramatic; I also like that Martin Edwards gives you a guide to the clues, which makes a second reading very enjoyable – as with many Golden Age Crime novels, a rereading once you know what to look for provides a very different experience and view of the story. Martin Edwards gives the reader the full benefit of his knowledge and passion for crime novels of this era.

If you are a fan of historical crime fiction, with a bent for Agatha Christie, Francis Iles, Dorothy L. Sayers et al this is a very enjoyable second book, in what I hope will become an extended series.

“The ghost climbed out of a hackney carriage”.

A arresting start to the second Rachel Savernake story by Martin Edwards and one up to which the rest of the novel largely lives. Contemporary takes on the classic Golden Age detective tale usually promise more than they deliver, but the plot here is as meaty and complex as any dish served up by the Queens and Kings of Crime.Graveyards, country houses and louche clubs all feature. The cast is varied and brightly characterful.

Rachel is an interestingly complex woman, with a suitably grim and deprived, yet privileged background, so archetypically British in its way. She also voices some pertinent thoughts on murder:-

“Improvisation?” He breathed out noisily. “Ridiculous. People don’t improvise when it comes to murder.”
“Because murder is so solemn and serious?” She shook her head. “Wrong. It’s precisely when you’re dealing with something out of the ordinary that you need to improvise. There’s no instruction manual for murderers.”

This is a very readable, neatly-crafted and well-written work.

Highly recommendable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the digital review copy.

This is the sequel to Gallows Court with the formidable Rachel Savernake and her band of secret crime-fighters and it does not disappoint. Well written, suspenseful and clever - it kept me guessing to the last page. Martin Edwards excels in this period genre and I can't wait for the next in the series. Bravo!

This is one of those books where I felt it would have been advisable to read the authors previous works. Rachel Savernake was a great character but I didn’t feel I really understood her back story.

I found this quite a confusing read with multiple storylines all tangled together. I couldn’t quite decide if the author intended us to be confused, or if it were supposed to be clearer how each part of the story fit together.

Not really my cup of tea, but thanks anyway to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

Set in 1930, this is the second book featuring the formidable Rachel Savernake. A series of murder cases in which there is a question over the verdict, a seedy Soho nightclub and a renown criminologist set the scene for this mystery. The style of the book is very much in the tradition of the golden age of mystery writing.
I found the story rather confusing at first, so many characters and seemingly unrelated narrative threads. This is the first book by this author I have read so wasn't sure if reading the first book of the series would have helped. Some of the characters, particularly the Trueman family, were likeable but many others lacked depth. The plot had many twists and surprises but the story became increasing improbable as progressed. I felt that there was lots of potentially good ideas but the big reveal at the end was implausible.

I have not read the other book in this series so was unfamiliar with Rachel Savernake and indeed this author. Unfortunately I felt there were a lot of errors that could have maybe been sorted with a more forceful editing hand. I appreciated that not just the time period but also the writing style is a more antiquated one, a throwback to mysteries of old. But I was unable to connect entirely with the book when so many of the narrative choices seemed convoluted. I would have loved a story about a female criminologist in the 1930s. I would have enjoyed a story about a shadow government pulling strings behind the scenes. I would have been thrilled with a story about murky private clubs in London. Instead I got so many ideas, people and story strands thrown about that it was hard to keep track of it all. As the final act was revealed, none of it made any sense and I was left a bit disappointed. A good yarn but sadly too unrealistic for my own tastes.