I appreciate the publisher allowing me to review this book. This was a interesting mystery that kept me guessing until the end

RATING: 3.5 STARS
2021; Kensington Books

Yay, I am officially caught up on this series! I binged this one from the library and really enjoyed it. My ratings have mostly been four stars, with a couple being 3.5 stars, like this one. I liked this book, but it dragged a bit for me. After I finished reading I found it harder to come back to pick it back up. It wasn't hard to read, but I wasn't rushing to pick it up. I did like that we got more of Fox in this book. Usually, he is off at boarding school or being petulant when he is home.

The Renshaw siblings's grandparents are celebrating their anniversary. The siblings travel to Staffordshire to commission a china service bearing the Wroxly coat of arms from the venerated Crown Lily Potteries, a favorite of Queen Mary. The two designers at the company have competing ideas, and before they make the compassion, one has been murdered. The two suspects are the other designer and the dead designer's son. The latter is a friend of Fox, and he wants to help him. Him and Phoebe try to help him; while Eva has been tapped to go undercover and make friends with the women who are allowed to paint but not design. Could one of them want the designer dead? I was more interested in the women aspect of the story. I enjoyed this book, just as much as the others. I can't wait I have to wait a year for the next book.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook/audiobook from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***

I have read the entire series and was intrigued when Phoebe's family and their maids travel to pick out a set of china for their grandparents anniversary gift. While in the company office, the Renshaws discover a murder has been committed. Fox's school friend is the primary suspect and arrested. The Renshaws decide to solve the murder and Eva takes a position as a china decorator to gather inside information. The Renshaws are a close family and work as a team to solve the mystery. Julia, Phoebe's sister, is waiting patiently for her baby's arrival and a subplot with greedy relatives is entertaining as well.
The books in this series are well written and historically accurate, The pacing is steady, and the books do not get descriptively bogged down. The ending isn't any surprise, but the journey to get there is exciting and fun. I look forward to the next installment in this series. Recommended.

After the Great War, families tried to return to what was normal, an impossibility. Even small things can be a comfort after horrific events. Julia, Phoebe, Amelia, and Fox have packed up and temporarily moved to the house Julia expects to inherit from her husband’s estate. This, of course, involves two drivers, two lady’s maids, and numerous trunks of clothing and jewelry to bring along. All this, so an anniversary set of hand-painted china can be commissioned for their grandparents.

Much to their surprise, the house is occupied by three people: one who has the right to be there and two who wish they did. The estate’s in limbo until the birth of Julia’s child—a son will inherit the title and estate, a daughter, only money and not the bulk of it.

At the Crown Lily Potteries, a favorite of Queen Mary, the family’s given a tour while Julia chooses her favorites from a multitude of shapes and designs. When the others return, no decision can be made since they’ve each chosen a different pattern.

Returning the next day, they find themselves in the middle of chaos when a body is found, definitely a murder. Trent, a school friend of Fox, is a likely suspect. Phoebe and her lady’s maid, Eva, agree to make inquiries. After all, workers will talk to Eva and the company’s owners will speak to a Lady.

As more bodies turn up, Phoebe and Eva find themselves in dangerous situations. Will they be able to find the killer before the killer finds them?

This is book six in the series. Eva enjoys a more familiar position with the family than most servants in that she is able to speak her mind instead of being invisible. Phoebe is a strong character who knows what she wants from her life. Jester, the Staffordshire bull terrier, added a bit of fun to the story so readers will want to see more of him. For a look back in time, a bit of crime, and two women willing to defy conventions in order to solve murders, readers will find this series fits the bill.

I really enjoy this series and this one did not disappoint. The entire family has traveled to Staffordshire to commission a set of china for their Grandparents. While at the factory Fox sees an old Eton schoolmate, Trent. When his father is murdered and he is arrested Phoebe and Eva set out to solve the crime, while the rest of the family helps Trent. I really enjoyed all the china industry background. Who knew the business could be so dangerous. The mystery was good and there were enough suspects to make it interesting. The solution made sense. This series should be read in order. The book was a quick fun read. Enjoy.

The sixth book, A Sinister Service, was another good book in the series. Though, I am getting a little tired of Lady Phoebe talking about wanting to find her way and do something of herself, but never saying what would interest her or trying anything out. I wish the author would make the character realize she could be a wife and have her own identity. I'm sure the author is writing what she believes women felt at that time in history, but if she (Phoebe) wants to be a trailblazer, why not show that could be done. I'm starting to like the Julia character more than Phoebe. LOL. Still, I enjoy the writing, supporting characters, and mysteries. Looking forward to the next. Hopefully, it will contain more Julia (and Theo). And, more Owen, please. Also, isn't it about time Eva's Constable gets a promotion.

A Sinister Service
By Alyssa Maxwell
Reviewed By Stephanie Saxon Levine
It is November, 1920 in post-Great War England. Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her three siblings, accompanied by two lady's maids, travel to Staffordshire to order a china service bearing the family coat of arms. The service is to be a present for their grandparents' anniversary.
Two designers at the manufacturer present competing patterns. The siblings agree to return to the factory the next day to make their final decision. At that time, one of the two designers is missing. Soon, he is found, gruesomely murdered. The competitor is suspected.
Complicating the case is the suspicion cast on the dead designer's son, a schoolmate of Fox, who is Phoebe's brother. Fox wants to help his friend so Phoebe investigates the rival designer.
Meanwhile, Eva, Lady Phoebe's maid, helps in the investigation by going undercover at the factory.
Together, Lady and Lady's maid investigate, pursuing a vicious killer, taking great risks to uncover the truth.
In this, the sixth Lady and Lady's Maid Mystery, Alyssa Maxwell creates a fascinating tale. She is expert at leading her readers into the lost world about which she writes. All the details are there, filling the reader's inner screen with the world as the Wroxley-Renshaw family would have known it. It almost seems as though the author had lived in that time and place and transports us there. She creates a bracing and satisfying mystery, while showing us a world we can never have known.
While A Sinister Service is the latest in this series, it can be read as a standalone, although the reader may well become hooked and read the previous books. Either way, reading A Sinister Service is time well spent! Kensington, 1st Printing: $26.00

Thank you Netgalley. A wonderful cozy mystery from Ms. Maxwell. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to more in the series.

Alyssa Maxwell enthralls with another Lady and Lady's Maid mystery in A Sinister Service. After the First World War Lady Phoebe and her siblings travel to a Lily Potteries to commission a dinner service for their Wroxley grandparents ' wedding anniversary. Eva, her lady's maid is along to serve her lady. Startintgly, Fox, their teenage brother finds an Eton friend at the factory. Soon the friend's father is found murdered in the factory. Things go downhill from their. Eva and Phoebe work together to find out who really murdered the victim and stole his pattern book Great historical cozy.

Princess Fuzzypants here: Phoebe and her siblings are in Staffordshire to choose a design for a new china service for their grandparents and to establish sister Julia’s rights as widow to her husband’s estate. They meet a friend of brother Fox at the factory. He has left Eton to learn the trade from his father, the head designer. When his father is gruesomely murdered, the young lad is arrested. Phoebe and her lady’s maid and friend Eva leap into action to find the real killer and exonerate Fox’s friend.

What they quickly discover is there has been industrial sabotage and there are plenty of available suspects for both the murder and the larceny. Hot on the trail, they devise subterfuges to question suspects but it is clear from early on, someone does not want them to dig very deeply. Shortly after the release of the lad, there is yet another victim, one that Phoebe may have led to her death. Things get truly dangerous when they discover yet a third body. While they may be getting closer to the villain, the villain is getting closer to them.

In fact, they get it wrong and the price may be their lives. It leads to an exciting and fraught situation but these two smart and plucky ladies will bring the killer to justice. It’s been fun reading about their exploits from WWI to the early days of the 1920’s. There has been a considerable loosening of the restraints put upon women over the course of the books but there are still those like Phoebe and Eva who refused to be defined by men. It makes for an interesting journey for both the characters and the readers.

Five purrs and two paws up.

New to me author and series that I enjoyed thoroughly. Well written with great character development and an engaging cozy mystery.

Phoebe and Eva are back, and far too close to murder at a porcelain factory!

The historical details in “Sinister” are really interesting, with lots of information about the design and manufacture of china. Maxwell does her usual thorough job of setting her characters against the social elitism of their day.

I read this book as part of the series, and was already familiar with the characters and their relationships. I think some of that would have been lost reading the book as a standalone.

A fun cozy! I look forward to more in the series.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The sixth installment of the Lady and Lady’s Maid cozy mysteries takes us to rural Staffordshire, where the smoke clouds from the porcelain factories’ kilns mar the beauty of the landscape. In November 1920, the three Renshaw sisters and their young brother visit Crown Lily to choose a pattern for a new china service for their grandparents. As they meet with the head designer and the factory owner, a prickly pall of tension is apparent, which Lady Phoebe Renshaw can’t quite put her finger on. When that same designer, Ronald Mercer, is found in one of the grinding machines, having suffered a gruesome death (which would have been more so had the huge blades not jammed), the police suspect the disgruntled son, Trent Mercer, who has been pulled unwillingly from his Eton education to follow in his father’s footsteps at Crown Lily. As the body count grows, Phoebe and her maid, Eva Huntford, investigate the suspects who all hold superior positions at the china factory, putting themselves at no small risk.

Maxwell’s cozy mystery takes place in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, the centre of England’s porcelain production. The intensely competitive nature of the business, post-war, features strongly in her plot. Phoebe is clever and innovative in her questioning of suspects, trying to catch them unguarded and draw them into traps of their own making. Here the four Renshaw siblings are together, and there is some interesting insight into their relationship with each other. For those new to the series, Phoebe’s friendship with her long-time maid, Eva, is quite different from what one would expect, but the end of the Great War brought forth rapidly changing times. This is an excellent standalone despite being part of an ongoing series, with lots to be learned about the bone-china industry, and a murderer who remains elusive until the final pages.

What starts out as a trip to Staffordshire with her siblings to pick out the pattern for a new china service for their grandparent's anniversary turns in to another case of murder. Lady Phoebe and her maid Eva are on the case when the police focus on the fifteen year old son of the dead man. The young man is a friend and former classmate of her brother, Fox so of course she has to find the killer.
Lady Phoebe and her sisters - Julia and Amelia and their brother Fox - had just made the acquaintance of Mr. Mercer and Mr. Bateman. While looking at various possible designs it becomes clear that there is tension between the two men. It isn't long before Mr. Mercer is found dead in a grinder used to grind and mix the beef bone, stone and clay used in the fine porcelain. Fox describes it as a giant sized version of Mrs. Ellison's hand-cranked dough kneader. What a vivid picture that gives the reader. Phoebe and Amelia start their investigating while Eva talks to the factory workers.
As we follow the case of murder there is also another thread. Julia had married Viscount Annondale which made her Lady Julia, Viscountess Annondale only to become a pregnant widow. On this jaunt to pick out the china pattern she is going to try and assert herself with his family. There are tensions there, too.
This is one of my favorite historical cozy series. The setting, the characters and the mystery are well balanced in every book in the series. I usually don't like multiple points of view/narrators but it works here.
My thanks to the publisher Kensington and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I received an ARC of this book to read through NetGalley. All opinions are my own. A Sinister Service by Alyssa Maxwell is the sixth book in her A Lady and a Lady’s Maid Mystery series.
I think you will enjoy this book more if you have read the previous books in the series. Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her family have travelled to Langston in the county of Staffordshire to purchase a set of custom china for their grandparents anniversary and to visit Lyndale Park the estate that will belong to her sister’s unborn child should he prove to be a boy. When one of the china designers is gruesomely murdered and his son, a schoolmate of her brother is arrested for the crime, Phoebe and her maid Eva Huntford set out to solve this mysterious death and locate his missing pattern book. Set at the end of World War I this engaging mystery explores the extreme competition and resulting skullduggery between competing china manufacturers. I enjoyed reading this book and do recommend it. Publishing Date: January 26, 2021. #ASinisterService #AlyssaMaxwell #HistoricalFiction #MysteryAndThrillers #MysterySeries #NetGalley #KensingtonBooks #bookstagram #bookstagramer

Number six in this cozy mystery series, but you don't need to have read any of the others.to enjoy this one. Set in an English manor house in Staffordshire, where fine china companies are in competition to make china good enough for the royal family. Lady Phoebe and her lady's maid Eva, along with Phoebe's siblings are at the factory ordering a set of china for their grandparents when a body is discovered. The young son of the victim is a friend of Phoebe's brother at Eton so the family takes an interest in finding the real killer. Interesting to learn a little about the process of making fine china. A lovely English setting and enjoyable, likeable characters, makes this a quick read.

Although I had read a couple of titles in Alyssa Maxwell’s Gilded Age series, I had not read any of the books in her Lady and Lady’s Maid series. So I was happy to receive an advance review copy of the latest title in the series, A Sinister Service, from the publisher.

Since this is the sixth in the series, and I hadn’t read any of the earlier books, I was a little confused at first about who the characters were and the relationships between them. I was especially puzzled by the relationships between Eva and the Renshaw siblings, which seemed a little unusual/too close for the post World War I setting. But eventually I picked up more background, as well as remembering that this is called the “Lady and Lady’s Maid” series, and I realized that these relationships are a feature of the series, so to speak, rather than a bug.

After I was able to settle in to the book, I enjoyed it. The Renshaws want to buy a tea service for their grandparents’ anniversary, and so they visit the Crown Lily China company, known for making porcelain for royalty. But unfortunately, along with a wide choice of tea services, Crown Lily China also offers up some murders. A school chum of Fox Renshaw (the only male among the siblings) is implicated in the first murder, and the Renshaws feel compelled to investigate.

What follows is a nice cozy mystery, with a bit of social commentary along the way. There’s a bit of male chauvinism, displayed both in the way women aren’t allowed to be designers at Crown Lily, and also in the casual and rather horrible way that the unmarried women painting the china are referred to as “surplus” women – “surplus” since so many British men were killed during the war. There’s some elite-ism, with Fox’s chum wanting to continue his studies at Eton, but being pulled out of school by his father to learn the china trade from the ground up. Maxwell handles these subjects well, weaving them nicely into the storyline, letting us learn and think without sounding like a history book.

Maxwell also provides a really nice in-depth look at the porcelain business. Having worked in the past with some materials scientists who specialized in high-temperature ceramics, I was especially interested in the china-making process, but I also enjoyed the descriptions of the porcelain business itself. Again the details are worked nicely into the plot.

All-in-all, I enjoyed this book, and I plan on going back and looking for some of the earlier titles in the series. I also recommend that others who haven’t read earlier titles may want to do so before reading this one, just to avoid the confusion I experienced early on. I’m also going to be looking forward to the next book, to find out whether Julia’s baby is a boy or a girl!

Please keep in mind that I try to fight “star-flation” a little bit, and I give very very few five-star ratings. As a result, a four-star rating from me, is a solid recommendation for a book. And that’s what A Sinister Service gets from me.

My thanks again to Kensington and NetGalley for the advance review copy!

In this 6th installment of the Lady and Lady’s Maid Mystery series, Lady Phoebe Renshaw, her three siblings Julia, Amelia, and Fox, as well as her faithful maid Eva Huntford, find themselves in Staffordshire England. On a mission to purchase a new tea set for their grandparents, Phoebe and Eva are drawn into another murder mystery. This time it is the head designer for the Crown Lily factory, Ronald Mercer. His son Trent Mercer, an Eton classmate of Fox’s, becomes the prime suspect. Julia and Eva along with the other Renshaws set out to prove his innocence. More murders, misleading clues and a host of suspects soon complicate their investigation. But nothing will stop this intrepid duo from finding the real murderer.

Interspersed within this intricately plotted historical mystery, are some of the serious social issues of the time period. The aftermath of WWI wrought many difficulties for women of the era. “Surplus Women” found themselves without husbands and effective means to support themselves. Unable to return to the traditional roles they aspired to before the war, they had to look for other means of survival. Gender and class roadblocks of the time are a part of this well- researched novel. Information about the history and making of Staffordshire pottery is also a fascinating part of the story.

With strong female characters, a wonderful sense of time and place, and an intriguing mystery; A Sinister Service is a welcome addition to the series. I cannot wait for the next one!

A Sinister Service is the sixth book in the A Lady And Lady’s Maid Mystery series by Alyssa Maxwell.

Ladies Phoebe, Julia, Amelia, their maids, and their brother, Fox, are off to visit the Crown Lily China company to search for new china set for their grandparents’. After a quick tour of the plant, they set down with Mr. Mercer, head designer, assistant designer, and Percy Bateman, to look over the various designs. While doing this Phoebe, notices some animosity between Mercer and Bateman. While they are looking over the designs, Eva decides to take another plant tour. Eva will late relate that there some china painters that are a bit disgruntled. When they return the next day, Eva decides to once again visit with the painters. Eva will soon learn that a body has been discovered in a grinding pan, where the material for making the china is mixed. The body found turns out to be Mr. Mercer. The police will take Mercer’s son into custody for the murder of his father. Trent Mercer, the son, was a schoolmate of Fox, until recently when his father removed him from school. Fox was good friends with Trent and will ask his sisters to clear his name. It will be up to Phoebe and Amelia to do most of the investigating as Julia is nearing her baby’s birth. Eva will relate the factory’s unrest and talk that some china shipments may be stolen before or during shipments.

I love this series, as all books are well-written, plotted, and historically accurate. The characters are all believable and well-developed. Fox is also developing into an intelligent and helpful young teenager, and I particularly liked this.

I am anxiously awaiting the book in this beautiful series. I’m interested in seeing whether Julia will have a boy and what she will do with her late husband’s estate.

A Sinister Service Is pure historical mystery delight! This is my first time reading Alyssa Maxwell and this series. I was worried entering the series on book 6, but Maxwell does a delightful job of weaving connections and the past together. I never felt like I was reading a summary of a past book. Everything stayed to present and I was completely absorbed.

This is the newest installment in a post-WWI series featuring a family of the Renshaw sisters, their brother, Fox, and Eva Huntford, their maid. They also have some other staff and extended family in this book.

The Renshaw family travel to The Crown Lily China Factory to have pattern designed and manufactured for their grandparents anniversary. They have a tour of the factory which was super interesting for a tea drinker like myself! Fox is also surprised to find an old friend from school on the tour, whose father is the chief designer at Crown Lily. When it comes to picking the china and a pattern the family has many opinions and during their bickering an incident occurs at the factory. This incident of course leads Lady Phoebe and Eva to investigate a murder.

We also have a subplot going on that must be in part of the other books as well. The eldest sister, Lady Julia, is pregnant and a widow. The family goes to stay at her husband’s property to find family troubles there.

I loved the characters, suspects and the twists and turns this story brings! I’m so looking forward to reading the next installment. Maxwell is a fantastic historical mystery writer and I have to read more of her work!

Thank you to #NetGalley and #Kensington Books for this Advanced Reader Copy. This review is my own.
#Alyssa Maxwell #ASinisterService #NetGalley