Cecily Sinclair, a recent widow and the proprietress of the the fashionable Pennyfoot Hotel in Badgers End finds her small seaside village is the location for numerous unexplained deaths which turn out to be murders. With the help of the faithful Baxter she determines to find out who is on a rampage in her small village. The year is 1906, and Ms. Kingsbury does a good job of painting life on a seacoast village at the turn of the century. The book moves along quickly, and the characters are a delight. All the makings of a wonderful cozy series. I am looking forward to reading more about Cecily and her friends. ( )

This is just not a great mystery. Nor is it a great historical. I had such hopes when seeing the era chosen and the setting. It was Duchess of Dukes Street becomes a detective, with the characters of just such a hotel as the Bentinck Hotel but set in southern england, most likely on the dover coast.

Well perhaps watching an episode or two of Upstairs Downstairs is all we need for period detail. Not that having so little period detail is cause for this tale to fail. But with so little, why set it in this period at all. Why not just have us with the murders and the mystery take place in modern times?

The author grew up in England and came to the US in the sixties, but that does not show in the writing. Certainly a thin veneer of the mores of the time is overlaid for a motive for the murders but stretch credulity with the murderer and the murder weapon.

This is the second in the series. I do hope that they will get better but I am not hopeful at this time. Not a reread, and perhaps not worthy of being added to a collection. ( )