Customer Reviews

The Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Emily Brightwell has written a series of Victorian mysteries starring Scotland Yard detective Witherspoon and his housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries. Inspector Witherspoon is not exactly the brightest candle in the cupboard, but he is an exceptionally nice man and a wonderful employer. Mrs. Jeffries, who IS one of the brightest candles in the cupboard, realizes that he might have difficulty solving cases on his own, and so she and the rest of the household staff resolve to help him along with any complicated case that may come up. At the same time, they want to make him think that he really solved the case all by himself.

The mystery in this book is the murder of a thoroughly despicable and not-very-competent local doctor, who has made himself wealthy by blackmailing everyone he can find to blackmail. The original assumption is that the doctor was poisoned with mushrooms, but as always in murder mysteries, there's more to the story than meets the first glance.

This is not a deep and complex mystery, but it isn't built on thin air, either. Brightwell's real accomplishment is in the very well drawn characterizations of the inspector, the servants (there are four including Mrs. Jeffries), and the suspects. The reader will quickly feel a fond affection for all of those people, and will enjoy following their thoughts and activities as the mystery is unraveled.

I usually find mystery novels as insubstantial as this one to be frustrating and feel that they're not worth my time. But I find the prospect of spending an afternoon with Mrs. Jeffries to be irresistible, and I plan to read every book in the series (according to the list at the front of my paperback copy, there are at least thirteen of them).

Enjoy!

Being a fan of M.C.Beaton, Janet Evanovich and Tamar Myers, it's hard to find another author that measures up to my expectations. Here's an author for beginning mystery readers. But, does she lead you on a merry goose chase! It's hard to figure at first what Mrs. Jefferies is up to; you know she's assisting the dithering inspector, but to what lengths... finally it all starts to come together and your left with a warm glow and the incredible need to find another Emily Brightwell, and read more about Mrs. Jeffries.

I was so happy to find this series! Mrs. Jeffries is a delightful lady who runs the house for Inspector Witherspoon. He isn't very good at solving murders, but Mrs. Jeffries and her staff are, so they help him out by doing some behind the scenes investigating. Then they steer the inspector in the right direction without letting him know. The characters are wonderful and they grow with each book. This may not be the greatest mystery you have ever read, but it will still be one you can't wait to finish so you can start the next one. I love them!!!!

I collected Emily Brightwell's Inspector Witherspoon and Mrs. Jeffries series ever since the first book came out and I just fell in love with the series. It's a combination of Victorian style and atmosphere with a hilarious tone and tons of fun. I could think of nothing more to do on a weekend than curling up on the couch with a hot mug of coffee and a blanket and just let your mind read the entire series. Each one of them is full of excitement and fun sleuthing by Mrs. Jeffries and her staff, Betsy, Smythe, Mrs. Goodge, and Wiggles(?) and the household dog Fred along with some of their friends are involved in solving cases that Inspector Witherspoon relunctantly but dutly solves. Including in the series, the ever hilarious Luty Belle Crookshank and her butler Hatchet especially with her wealthy, American attitude and her outspoken views versus his stiff upper lip Brtishiness and that adds up to some really wild exchanges between the two of them. The joy of this is that the Inspector has no clue that he has help from his devoted staff and their friends. Even the loyal Constable Barnes clued in to their sleuthing but supports them.

Emily Brightwell has given us her version of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Mrs. Jeffries, to the world at large, seems a simple houskeeper taking care of her employer, Inspector Witherspoon, a officer in the employ of the famous Scotland Yard. To the reader, however, Mrs. Jeffries is a cunning sleuth who can track down the most difficult clues to help capture the villian. Other minor characters lend Mrs. Jeffries a hand while keeping the Inspector in the dark as to her abilities. This first book in the series introduces us to all of the characters who will become more important as the series progresses. The dimensions of each character are revealed to us in a very realistic manner. You learn a little bit more about each minor character as the series develops. No character is as important as Mrs. Jeffries, of course, but Ms. Brightwell does not cheat the minor players by focusing solely on the housekeeper. Ms. Brightwell's characterization methods are superb and a welcome change from the one-shot fellows that other authors use and then discard. The best use of this characterization is most probably the introduction of a well-to-do elderly woman whom we meet briefly in the first book and then becomes much more involved in later books. The byplay between this character and her butler in later books provides a welcome comic relief to a sometimes dark scene. The mystery itself is fairly well thought out and complex at times, but the clues are always there for anyone canny enough to spot them. Sometimes the solution seems a bit simple, but there's always a surprise ready to throw your suspicions in the wrong direction. The final "payback" of the books in the series that I've read were a little disappointing. The murderer usually ends up poisoning himself or herself to escape true justice and this seems a bit of a cheat to the reader. As a whole, the book is a stunning work for a seemingly simple pulp mystery. The characters are brilliant and develop wonderfully as time goes on. The mystery itself is a fairly complex and convoluted mess until the clues begin to pile up and are eventually sorted by Mrs. Jeffries for those of us who have little experience or perception in spotting them. I would recommend this book and this series to everyone who loves mysteries. Even those novices who have turned from another genre to mystery, this series is a fantastic "teeth cutter" to read and enjoy.

I love Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and as a girl who got hooked on mysteries because of Nancy Drew, it'll come as no surprise that I like this book (and the following series). It's fun and entertaining. Not at all hardboiled-which I loathe as a genre. Mrs. Jeffries and her crew use their ingenuity, not their fists.

The focus of the book was in solving the mystery, and the answer was fairly clever (though I did solve it long before our heroes did). The pacing was good, and the characters engaging. The world-building was okay. It often felt to me like this mystery could have happened at any time but had a few historical things dropped in to make it a historical. The social structure shown in the book certainly wasn't typical of the time. The characters are what kept me reading, not the mystery of the history.

Also, I'm 99% sure that the method used to kill would not actually kill a person. This ruined the whole story for me. (It's not not what was used to kill the person but how the death was given that I have problems with.)

I read a lot of historical mysteries, and I love Victorian ones, so that is why I've begun the Emily Brightwell series about the clever Mrs. Jeffries. This book is written with a light hand, but the characters show promise. The bumbling Inspector Witherspoon, the street smart Smythe, the uppity cook Mrs. Goodge, and Betsey and Wiggins, as well as Mrs. Jeffries. These characters show a lot of promise, and I will continue to read this series. But readers don't expect a real Victorian flavour to these books. I found while reading the book that it was set in the Victorian age, but it very easily could have been any other era or place. Even the English cozy atmosphere that the writer tries to depict seems a bit contrived. For those who read the historical genre for atmosphere, they will find that as well as a sense of time and place is somewhat lacking in this series. Still a fun mystery (even though an easy one to figure out).

This is the first book in the Mrs. Jeffries series and introduces us to the household staff of Inspector Witherspoon. It seems that the Inspector needs just a bit of help in solving his murder cases for Scotland Yard, and Mrs. Jeffries and her staff set out to help him solve his first case. When a local doctor is poisoned, the Inspector must determined if he was killed by his own cook or if someone is trying to frame her to throw suspicion elsewhere.

I enjoyed reading this first book in the series, and enjoyed the relationships between the characters (mainly Mrs. Jeffries and the other members of the household) better than the actual mystery itself. I thought that Inspector Witherspoon was portrayed as a bit too dumb in this book, but having read several in the series, I have to say that he gains more skills and confidence in his abilities as the series grows. If you enjoy cozy mysteries, than this Victorian mystery is for you. Enjoy!

As stated in the summary above, I found this a very unconvincing "Victorian" mystery. Mrs. Jeffries's so conscious about PC that the period flavor of this book is definitely of the 1990s, not of 100 or so years ago. Makes one wonder why bother to plant the whole cast in Victorian England at all. Perhaps merely to justify that a police inspector should have the means to support such an extensive household?