Sick of Shadows: An Edwardian Murder Mystery
By M. C. Beaton
3.5/5
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About this ebook
From New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton: Imagine if the rebellious sister from Downton Abbey and her maid got mixed up in murder.
Captain Harry Cathcart and Lady Rose Summer have entered into an engagement of convenience-convenient for Rose, who wants to avoid being sent to India with all the other failed debutantes. Despite her considerable good looks, Rose's sharp intellect and radical ideas have served to repel her would be suitors. Rose's parents, unaware of the deception, are hardly thrilled that their only child is marrying a man in trade, but Harry comes from a good family, and at the very least, they hope he will keep their troublesome daughter out of mischief.
Unfortunately, even a pretend engagement cannot save Rose from trouble. Bored with endless parties, teas, and balls, she befriends Dolly Tremaine, a beautiful young girl newly arrived from the country and overwhelmed by the demands of the Season. Rose is delighted to have a protégée but their friendship is cut tragically short when Dolly is found floating in a river. Harry is summoned immediately to help solve the mystery of Dolly's death, and to keep Rose from being the murderer's next victim.
Sick of Shadows is the exciting third book in M.C. Beaton's sparkling Edwardian Murder Mysteries Series.
M. C. Beaton
M. C. Beaton (1936-2019), the “Queen of Crime” (The Globe and Mail), was the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Agatha Raisin novels -- the basis for the hit series on Acorn TV and public television -- as well as the Hamish Macbeth series and the Edwardian Murder Mysteries featuring Lady Rose Summer. Born in Scotland, she started her career writing historical romances under several pseudonyms and her maiden name, Marion Chesney. In 2006, M.C. was the British guest of honor at Bouchercon.
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Reviews for Sick of Shadows
122 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rose is engaged to Harry - though in name only. She befriends a country debutante who ends up dead. Then Rose, along with her trusty maid servant, try to outdo Harry in finding out who killed the girl. Sometimes I just wanted to bang the heads of Rose and Harry together - they are both pretty dense when it comes to understanding how the other feels about them. There's lots of silliness - Rose has lots of "modern" ideas, but really is much more comfortable than she things with the status quo.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fourth in series. Lady Rose is unsure of her real/pretend engagement to Sir Harry. Despite her supposed indifference to him she becomes violently jealous when he escorts an attractive client to a social event. When she finds the client dead she is arrested for the murder. Both her romance with Sir Harry and her maid's romance with Sir Harry's manservant have their ups and downs as the real murderer is tracked from England to France and back. The romance lends some interest, but constant threats of Rose's parents to send her to India for a suitable husband begin to pall.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Apparently she's called the Queen of Crime. Its one of the slowest crime books I've ever read. The romance between the lead pair is just as boggling. On off, on-off. A complete waste of time.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Lady Rose Summer & Captain Harry Cathcart are at it again: A country preacher's daughter, Dolly, is out for the season in order to find a suitable husband. But Dolly is unhappy and turns to Rose for help.When Rose shows up the next morning to meet Dolly, she finds Dolly very much dead & laid out in a rowing boat arranged to look like the Lady Shallot. As the story moves along: Rose begins to receive threatening letters and is sent to the country w/ Daisy, her companion; she breaks her engagement to Harry & to avoid being sent to India, proposes to her friend Peter. Peter is then set up in a homosexual scandal and flees to France (Harry & Rose then work to turn the tables). Daisy & Becket, Harry's valet, are still very much in love but are continually being thwarted by Lady Rose's & Harry's on again/off again relationship.I'm becoming rather bored w/ Rose & Harry's on-off relationship.... it is tiresome and the problems are mostly caused by his continually being unavailable to attend society functions, where his presence is required and their total lack of communication.I found the ending to be not very well though out...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Another entertaining installment in Beaton's Edwardian mystery series. This one moves along at a good clip and the character of Lady Rose Summer begins to become a little more three-dimensional.However, it has a HUGE continuity error in it. In the previous book (_Hasty Death_), Captain Cathcart presents Lady Rose with a ring upon their "engagement" ("Harry stood up and fished in his pocket and drew out a little box. He opened it to reveal a sapphire-and-diamond ring"). But in this third installment, we're told that she wears "a small engagement ring" that she purchased "out of her own pin money, Harry having seemingly forgotten he was expected to supply one"! It was at that moment I wondered how carefully Chesney has really thought through her series--or whether she or her editor bothered to reread the previous book before beginning work on this one! I'll finish the series, since there's only one more book, but in general, I'm finding it very haphazardly put together.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Formulaic, but passes the time. The snippets of information about Edwardian life are really annoying.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Clumsily styled predictable plot involving shallow caricatures in a poorly researched pastiche of Edwardian England. A deeply disappointing book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In this third Edwardian Murder Mystery, Lady Rose Summer befriends a young and beautiful pastor's daughter, Dolly Tremaine, only to discover the girl murdered and floating in a boat on the Serpentine River. When gossip indicates that Rose knows more about the murder than she actually does the perpetrator comes hunting for her and it is up to her fiancée-in-name-only (or so they say) and private investigator, Harry Cathcart to see to her safety.I can't say that I'm loving these cozy mysteries but there is something about them that keeps me reading. The style of writing seems more stilted than the first book, but less than the second. At the same time it is so simple and easy going in context that I never felt compelled to put it down. The relationship between Rose and Harry is exasperating to say the least. Both of them are so overly sensitive and stubborn that the slightest misunderstanding on either part sends the other right over the edge. I guess maybe it is supposed to be charming, but after a while it just became a bit annoying.The mystery in this story was more convoluted than in the first couple books and there are a couple parties that I never really figured out the motivations for, although Harry's method of getting them to leave Rose alone was rather ingenious.Overall this story had some irritating quirks but ultimately was entertaining enough to make me want to go forth and once again read the next of the series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Captain Harry Cathcart and Lady Rose Summer have entered into an engagement of convenience.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I love mysteries, I love Edwardian times. Honestly though, this is one of the most ill-written books I've read in years. Normally I hoard books like the gold they are, but this one will be passed on in hopes of finding another home who can maybe appreciate it. The plot is tired, and the crucial elements which should drive the book along are weak and overdone.