I had not read the first book in this series, and I will have to go back and read it as this one was interesting. The story is a golden age style of mystery, it takes place in 1930, the main character is Rachel Savernake an amateur detective who, at the beginning of the book, tries to warn someone that they have been targeted by a group and will likely be killed on the Necropolis Company funeral train (apparently a real thing back then). Of course the fellow doesn’t listen to her and meets a grisly end. There are a lot of characters in this book and at times it can be confusing to keep up with the different story lines. Overall though it was enjoyable, in particular, the ending which reminded me somewhat of a Clue game, where the one character sets out the details of how, where and why the crimes were committed and by who in front of all the characters, well those that made it to that point at least. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Lately I have been reading several of the British Library Crime Classics, reissues of golden-age mysteries from the 1920s and later. Martin Edwards writes most (if not all) of the introductions, and one can tell he really appreciates the style and substance of those novels from the past.

So I was keen to read “Mortmain Hall”, the second book in a series set in the 1930s, in which Mr. Edwards takes his turn at writing a classic mystery.

The story starts dramatically, with the protagonist, young beautiful wealthy amateur sleuth Rachel Savernake, trying to prevent a murder on London’s Necropolis Railway (yes, that was a real thing). Meanwhile, we also get protagonist #2, even younger eager reporter Jacob Flint, covering a sensational murder trial at which the accused gets reprieved by a last-minute surprise witness. At the trial Jacob meets Mrs Leonore Dobell, another amateur detective who’s interested in people who have gotten away with murder, who asks Jacob to pass a message on to Rachel.

And those are the basics. The plot moves between these three characters as well as many others, through the seedy underbelly of London’s private clubs, through several additional murders and close calls, through government intrigue, until finally all of the characters are gathered at Mortmain Hall, the country estate of Mrs. Dobell, where a couple of additional murders lead to the final confrontation and discovery.

For the most part I enjoyed this story, although I wish I had read the first book to fully understand the history of the relationship between Rachel and Jacob, as well as the background stories of Rachel and her father, also her loyal servants. The plot is complex and the action moves all over the place, including some murders in the past. I guess I was also expecting most of the action to take place in the titular country mansion, such as many of the golden-age mysteries seem to do, but unfortunately very little time is actually spent at Mortmain Hall. But overall a fun read, I look forward to the next chapter in the series.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

I usually like stories from the Golden Age of Mysteries but this one was soooo long and drawn out. I didn't want to skip parts in case I missed something but eventually I did. The ending was sudden and didn't make sense and after having invested all that time reading the book I expected a better payoff. It's not that this was a bad story....it just wasn't a really good one. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced readers copy for review.

It was a good mystery thriller but it was extremely long! . The story was dragging at points. The writing style was confusing, the feeling depicted were not easy to interpret. Extremely long for a mystery, disappointed with it.

***Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***

A little all over the place, but interesting nonetheless.

I received a copy from Netgalley in return for an honest review. It was my first Netgalley book. I felt both delighted and daunted. After reading it, I felt disappointed.
The best part of the book was the blurb/back cover synopsis. The book did not live up to its expectations.
It was a Golden Age style mystery (complete with the scene at the end where the detective gathers all the suspects in one room and explains exactly what happened, who did it, and why). There was also a clue index at the back, which would have been a fun touch, had it not been so necessary! The ending seemed to come out of nowhere. The "clues" could hardly be called such, and the solution was a real stretch. There was no tension or sense of urgency, and the characters felt flat. I didn't feel invested in either their wellbeing or success.
I also learned, after, that this was the second in a series. I feel like even if I had read the first, it wouldn't have helped to elleveate the problems I had with this one.
Perhaps I was just not the target audience? For me, this was a miss.

This book had me hooked from the opening chapter when the heroine is described as athletic. She was charming and determined. It was a pleasure to read.

London 1930—reclusive criminologist Rachel Savernake is back to investigate a collection of seemingly unrelated murders. In each instance there is a question of whether the individual found guilty is murder the actual murderer, or did someone get away with the perfect crime.

I was blown away by this book! The plot is intricate, atmospheric, and filled with characters who keep you guessing. The narrative alternates between the viewpoint of Rachel and that of Jacob Flint, a crime reporter who has had occasion to help—and be helped—by Rachel (Gallow’s Court, also by Martin Edwards, introduces the characters). Jacob is an engaging character, if a bit more naïve then you would expect. Rachel is a fantastic character with secrets that make you want to keep reading—just to figure out what is going on with her.

Edwards fills the story with striking period detail and intriguing historical features. His backdrops are perfect for a mystery with roots deep in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Beginning with a ride on the Necropolis Railway, through the louche clubs of London’s Soho, and finally to a grand manor house in Yorkshire.
This is a fascinating and very satisfying read; one that I highly recommend.

“I CAN’T LET SLEEPING MURDERS LIE.”
This story is set in the 1930ies, after the Wall Street crashes and in the period that communism had a wide following in workers’ circles.
Rachel is the daughter of an infamous judge, who was brought up on a remote island. She’s about 25, extremely wealthy and lives in London with her 3 servants, whom she treats more as if they’re family. She’s got a morbid fascination for murders and in the past, she helped to solve a couple of crimes that Scotland Yard couldn’t crack.
The book starts with Rachel trying to convince a man (who faked his own death a couple of years earlier) that he is in mortal danger. He doesn’t believe her and is murdered not long after. How did she know this? Apparently, she was warned by Reggie Vickers, a shady figure who works for the civil service under the ‘defence of the realm act’. I don’t think that he’s a real spy, but he’s certainly partial to secrets.
Rachel has a strange relation with Jacob Flint, a young reporter for ‘the Clarion’ that helped her solve some mysteries in the past. He admires her greatly but he’s also a bit afraid for her and considers her to be ruthless. He promised her not to publish anything about her without her consent. She uses him to root in places where she herself can’t, not always giving him all the relevant information.
There’s also Mrs Leonore Dobell, a criminologist who’s famous under her male alias. In her books, she points out suspected miscarriages of justice. She herself has a family history in that area. She asks Jacob to put her in touch with Rachel to discuss murder and invites her for a weekend at her country estate, Mortmain. She also invites 3 people whom she considers as having wrongly evaded the noose.

It’s a very complex and complicated plot, as there are several topics, multiple crimes and murders involved. You have to keep your head with the story at all times. At the end of the book, there’s a long list of all the clues you might have missed while reading, that would have given you the solution. I have to admit that I missed most of them; it’s a very nice addition that I wish to see in more books. It’s always so frustrating when you don’t know how the detective comes to his/her conclusion. Resist the urge to peek though, as that spoils the fun. I did resist!
Rachel, the protagonist, can be compared with a much younger Miss Marple (they live in the same period) with a rich girl’s prerogatives. She’s not a PI that can be hired or policeman who has to answer to his chief but a gifted amateur who chooses her own battles.
There’s an extensive cast of characters, that all have their own back story which is important for the various events in this book. It’s important to keep your oversight of those. I can’t tell you more or I’ll spoil the effect.
Most of what I know about this period comes from the early Agatha Christie novels that I read as a very young teen. The atmospheric descriptions here remind of those. This book does reflect many of the characteristics of those books but is much darker and politic in nature, the body count does rise just the same though.
Unfortunately, I didn’t read the first book in this series and that’s a serious setback as there are so many references to things that happened in the past without further elaboration. I really had to puzzle together the clues and guess what had happened before and how the various characters related to one another. Now that I’ve read this book, I think it will be easier to continue with the next ones in this series, when they’re written that is. But I strongly advise reading the previous book before starting this one. It’s well worth it.
I received a free ARC from Poisoned Pen Press through Netgalley and this is my honest unbiased review of it.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

In comparison with the first instalment of the series, I thought this was a bit of a mess. There was too much going on, and far too many characters. It had its moments; I enjoyed Jacob's escape from the attic room for example, but mainly it was confusing and not terribly logical. The death toll was high, especially towards the end, but there had been so many characters to keep on top of that there were still plenty left.

Disappointing in comparison the "Gallows Court", but nicely written with touches of humour.

Mortmain Hall has multiple threads and multiple characters. The threads are tied together at the end, but the narrative is disjointed, skipping around from one seemingly unconnected crime to another.

The characters have little depth, which is not atypical in Golden Age Detective novels, but usually there is something likable about the main characters and a hint of more in their personalities. Rachel remains distant, aloof, detached from the other characters (with the exception of the Truemans) and undisturbed by the many deaths.

The events are often disconnected, and only at the end are the links all untangled. There are hints, some obvious, others subtle, but still a stretch of the imagination.

Despite Martin Edward's love of the time period and the novels of the Golden Age, neither book was as entertaining as I had hoped.

NetGalley/Poisoned Pen Press
Detective/Crime. April 2, 2020.

Mortmain Hall

When a renowned criminologist and author brings together four separate murder suspects who she believes have each gotten away with “the perfect murder”, you’d expect things to become interesting. What you get, however, is a book that is ⅔ focused on relating the stories of each of these people - the background of how they came to be collected under the roof of the dreary and all but abandoned Mortmain Hall. The remaining ⅓ of the book details the events at the Hall. These events pay off in the form of murder, suspicion, and intrigue. All along the way, crime-obsessed Rachel Savernake, journalist Jacob Flint, and Rachel’s collection of servants-come-friends guide an investigation into a collection of crimes that couldn’t possibly be related - until it becomes obvious that they are, and that there’s more to come.

The book begins with an Epilogue, which I initially thought would be strange, but it sets the story up from the beginning, and I immediately wanted to know more. I’ve not yet read anything from author Martin Edwards, and noticing this was the second book in an apparent series, had some apprehension about whether I’d feel lost as a reader. Within the first few pages, however, the attention to detail and description was so well done that I could see the railway and detective Rachel staking out her POI, and felt comfortable that I would be able to immerse myself, even if I’d missed some things from the first book. As I delved further and was introduced to the character Jacob, a newspaper writer, I realized I was indeed missing some things that had likely come before, but this didn’t put me off as I continued reading, too interested to find out how everything would come together. At this point I will mention that I did indeed begin to wonder, around Chapter 6, how and when exactly everything would come together, as the true story hadn’t seemed to have started yet. This waiting for the story to actually start continued for quite some time. I don’t think things really came together until after Chapter 20 or so. The beginning just seemed to work too hard to build quite a lot of connections and interrelated characters, which honestly could have been done A LOT quicker. The end brings everything together beautifully, but it took some work to get there.

The writing is descriptive to begin with, but then seems almost procedural through the middle of the book - again, this could stem from the desire to cram too much background and connection-building into the book. As I was reading I encountered a few instances of wording issues, where word choice in general was weird and took away from the flow of reading, or where the sentence structure was a little odd. These instances were few enough that I didn’t mind, overall. On occasion I was left wondering just exactly when this story is supposed to take place, getting mixed messages as I read. One point in the later chapters solves this with a nearly specific year, but I still felt my time/place references to be muddled.

The characters are an interesting bunch. I spent the majority of the book being told how horrible and distant a person Rachel is, but didn’t actually see that play out in any real way. She was rather detached from those around her, discounting her servants, but she wasn’t really fleshed out enough to present anything other than the picture of an amateur detective of means with secrets of her own. She didn’t seem to mind using people to her own ends, a trait the author shares when it comes to his characters. Jacob Flint, Reggie Vickers, and even Leonora Dobell and her motley collection of murderers are introduced, used to some degree, and then discarded/picked back up without any real development of character, but rather as means to an end. As it appears Rachel and Jacob could be sticking around for more adventures, developing them further and giving readers a reason to connect to them would be beneficial.

As a reader, I am beyond a fan of British crime and mystery novels. They are among my favorites to read, especially historical ones, which I originally took this book to be. It doesn’t quite fit that mold, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. It was a pretty good read, although it takes quite a long time to really get going, and often becomes disjointed from attempts to accomplish too much. I would definitely recommend reading the first book before picking this one up, however, since I feel you’d have a better understanding of several of the characters. The ending leaves room for another installment, and I enjoyed this enough to give another book a chance.

Overall, a solid 4 stars