London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.
Believing that Mrs Ashton is genuine, grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother’s untimely death. But Lady Violet’s powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?
Uncovering this MP’s wicked crimes will put all three women in terrible danger…
To solve a shocking murder, look on both sides of the grave.
"An astonishing feat of twisting plots and perceptions"
“It's deliciously twisty, with women who won't be told, a young bride in peril, and the delicate art of a con.”
“A book I've been looking for all my life. Queer found family all wrapped up in a supernatural murder mystery. Absolute perfection.”
“a brilliant, gripping story. .. if you're looking for a great new book to read, I encourage you to check it out.”
"...an actually intriguing mystery.”
“with a new murder thrown in and a couple of pre-existing ones uncovered, we get an astonishing story of redemption with well-plotted but never signposted twists and turns thrown in at every stage.”
“…a murder mystery with a supernatural spin. … the premise and plot were great. The story is very atmospheric with a very nasty aristocrat villain. ..an entertaining read..."
Chapter 4. The Ambitions of Miss Maisie Kendrick
Second floor back, 13 Jonah Court, Wretchmarket, Thameswake. Friday
Authors note. We meet Maisie in Chapter 1 but this is the first chapter from her viewpoint.
The family’s grimy rooms in Jonah Court were one room split by ragged curtains. Rats worked their scurrying mischief under the floors. Maisie had heard Pa go before first light, red-eyed and guilty, to look for work. He’d eaten the last food, for a docker cannot work empty to find the rent. Everything would be far worse on the street.
Maisie had work for Mrs Ashton today, a real adventure. A wicked sir puffed up with his money and importance, and a weeping childless lady in danger. Mrs Ashton might need her for weeks. The sexton had told her something odd last night, about people snooping on the two strange birds. Maisie must get the kids to school then investigate.
She got George and Tildy waked, wiped, and decent, and gave George the medicine she hid under her women’s rags, so Pa wouldn’t drink it. Thank goodness for Mrs Colquhoun downstairs – she was a mighty gap-toothed ogre, but she’d loved Ma and had a soft heart, which meant porridge for the three of them and bread to take for lunch. Payment was the stern lecture Maisie knew by heart, on the heathen failings of Mrs Ashton – the warning of the Holy Father against ghost-mongering – and the desirability of good, honest, reliable work.
Mrs Colquhoun had the whole downstairs floor of the building for her needle-girls, and Maisie sewed for her when nothing else paid. Such long dull work, and if her mind fled to far-off lands or solving mysteries, she made mistakes and the work had to be done again.
The jeering rhyme ‘Tinker, heathen, darkie, thief,’ followed everywhere the three Kendricks went. Yet, Mrs Colquhoun’s carrot-headed brood, including two hulking apprentices, were gallant protectors. Friends with fists; no one dared risk more than jeers.
The streets were shiny-washed with rain, sparkling – dark islands of shit in a silver sea. Every day she saw those who lived in holes, or under a piece of stolen canvas. Barefoot in the dirt, your cuts festered. She remembered how she had raged when the kids’ boots were stolen. Mrs Ashton had replaced them, bless her.
When she could, Maisie took the kids to school, trying to keep up their spirits with the hug at the gate. But Maisie had to earn a living… School had books and posh people’s libraries had more books than any one person could read. She was no more allowed in those than she’d ever be invited to Buckingham Palace.
The steamship and the railway meant you could go most anywhere in the world, balloons could soar above mountains, and submarines even went under the sea. Only eighty days to go round the world. She’d rescued that book from a hawker…
Yet London was the centre of the world – almost a country – with palaces and flophouses, bright taverns and squalid drinking holes, churches and knocking shops, tall warehouses in sooty brick and squat lean-tos. Wood and iron and mud and stone – a cauldron of sweet and bitter, old and new, rich and poor, steam rising and sewers stinking and factories smoking.
One more hug at the gates, and Maisie was free. She ran through shining streets to the Burning Bird, to see what Sal knew. Maisie ran, skirts flying, boots ringing out on the cobbles, herself again. All were about their business.
Streets crowded with horse-drawn buses and drays, a wounded soldier with his barrel organ, and a rough dock prophet on a crate shouting, angry about the End of The World. Roofs dripped and the sparrows played in the puddles.
Everything about Sal was big. She ran the pub like a sergeant major and she could stop a fight with a whistle. ‘Thought you’d come,’ Sal said, dismissing the drayman. ‘Some odd cove asking after your Mrs Ashton last night. Generous with his coin, beers all round, bit of a flirt. An enquiry agent.’
Someone paid to spy? Maisie could play that game. Beat him at it.
Stephen Cox is a writer living in London. He’d read every Holmes, Christie, and Sayers before he was 21 and did Holmes fanfic in school. He has also read the Moonstone six times. With a science degree he has always been a fan of history and the imagination.The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder contains the strong characterisation, women protagonists, authentic period setting, and wide roaming imagination of his other works.
He says ‘It’s a rip-roaring twisty story, with relationships under stress and surprising readers at every turn.”
His first two novels, Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds were called “heartfelt, imaginative and gripping”, with wide praise in the national press.
Stephen says ‘I wanted female rogues as my leads – people who lead a crooked life, who need to keep secrets, yet can be kind and generous too. This is a rigorous detective story with a client in trouble and old crimes to be solved. It has everything – a brutal man, a Lady in danger, and the past and present feeding the action. Can these outsiders possibly win? Queer women certainly existed and made lives together in Victorian England, as those with eyes to see can see,’
.png)
Click Here for the list!
(Google gives me a small commission if you click on ads)
Congrats to the author! Thanks for the giveaway and prizes!
ReplyDelete