A Mansion for Murder by Frances Brody - Review

 

I picked up this book when I went to a crime writing conference in Leeds in June 2023. I hadn't read anything else by Frances Brody before but I was intrigued by the blurb so I bought the book. It's taken me until now to pick it up, but I'm glad I did! It's the thirteenth book in the Kate Shackleton series and clearly I've read none of them, but I didn't find that that was a hindrance to reading the book. I feel like I learnt enough about Kate to understand her and understand the book. 

This book is set in 1930 and I understand the rest are set in the 1920s, which is a really lovely time setting, I like this for detective books. Kate lives in Leeds and I liked the descriptions of parts of Leeds that I know but which were so different a hundred years ago. This book is mostly set in Saltaire, though, which is a place I don't know well but have been a few times. I love reading books set in places I know! It just makes me feel happy. This is a proper cosy mystery and it was perfect to read in the November dark, I think. If you don't know Saltaire, it's a model village built by Sir Titus Salt around the mill, which still exists and which is huge. It's near Bradford. 

So Kate receives a letter from a young man called Ronnie Creswell. He says he has information for her about Salts Mill in Saltaire. She makes plans to go and meet him there. But when she gets there, he's dead. His colleague David has found his body in the reservoir below the mill (who knew mills had reservoirs... not me, apparently) and at first thinks he has been drowned. But his body shows that he had been killed - but who would kill him? 

There are a few different strands to the book. Firstly, there's the mill itself, and the owners and workers there. The owner is having some difficulties with competitors, and needs Kate's colleague, Jim Sykes, to go a bit undercover to see what he can uncover there. The owner's daughter, Pamela, was in a secret relationship with Ronnie and although there were class differences between them, it seems like the owner (whose name I've forgotten, clearly) wanted to bring Ronnie on to the board and train him up, and wasn't completely against the match. His wife, though, was. Pamela is devastated by his death. 

Then there's the mansion. Nick Creswell, aka Old Nick, remembers the building of the mansion. At the time, he was living with his grandma and there were stories about a young shepherdess who was pushed down the well. He finds a bone that they think belongs to her, and he buries it near where they're building the new mansion. Not too long later, his is walking one day when his teacher, Miss Mason, suffers a stillbirth on the path. She asks him to bury the baby, which he does. He keeps this secret for years and years. In the book, he is an old man and losing his marbles a bit, so people aren't sure what to believe of what he says.

There is believed to be a curse on the mansion. Many owners have lived there and moved out. Kate and Mrs Sugden, her assistant, end up living in the Tower while investigating Ronnie's murder, but everyone in the village is suspicious of the place. 

I liked the book generally and would read more in the series. My one criticism really is that there were a few places where the book hadn't been proof read properly - Ronnie was alive again at one point! But I'm giving this four out of five and I did like it.