Review of The Ghost and Mrs Jeffries by Emily Brightwell

A Victorian housekeeper and her merry band of servants set out to help their hapless master, an Inspector of Police, solve yet another baffling crime.

Chosen because: found in a charity bookshop

Apparently there are no less than 31 books now in the 'Mrs Jeffries' detective series, so I'm astounded that I haven't come across them before. Cosy and unchallenging, they seem like a natural fit for our village library. On the other hand, this one was dull enough that perhaps some quality control has kicked in to the crime shelves... 

The premise is quite fun - Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard is a lovely man, but an utterly incompetent detective. Luckily, he has his housekeeper Mrs Jeffries and the rest of the servants to uncover the mysteries for him, all the time without letting him know that they are doing the work.

I can imagine that in Book 1 of the series, that premise was enough to keep the plot and characters running along nicely. This one is Book 3 in the series, and to me at least, while the premise is still amusing, the novel itself sagged terribly.

The detective plot is weak, and relies on a bizarre coincidence that no-one could have foreseen.  On the other hand, since I'd lost interest in the plot by that point, I hardly cared that the reader hadn't had a chance to unravel the mystery. Anyway, the unsympathetic characters had done the murder, and the sympathetic ones were innocent, so that was all all right.

A pet hate of mine is unconvincing historical novels, and lets just say that this is a very unconvincing set of people for 1887. There's very little effort to make any of the characters anything other than a 21st century person in a frilly Victorian outfit - the wealthy American woman constantly hobnobbing with her butler, and toting him round as if he were a handbag, is particularly odd. Yes, it can be difficult to make people from another century appealing to the reader, with their totally different set of values and judgements, but it would have been nice to see the author try.

However, given that there are another 28 books in the series all finding eager readers, I'm obviously in a minority on this one. My copy is going back to the charity shop.