Customer Reviews

Mrs. Jeffries on the Ball

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Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff team up again to assist Inspector Witherspoon and Scotland Yard solve a baffling case. The Queen's Ball turns into a fatal affair and the staff must help the Inspector solve the mystery before another murder occurs.

This is the 5th book in the series. Each book adds strength to the characters and deepens the relationships between each of them. A love interest for the Inspector is introduced in this book (however slow-moving that is) and Smythe is shown to have a mystery of his own. I enjoy the fact that there is a developing storyline within this series that grows with each book. However, it would still be possible to pick up any book in the series and not be confused by the subplots.

If you want to start the series at the beginning, the first is "The Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries". Enjoy!

I had this book sitting on a shelf for quite a while before I finally picked it up and read it last week. The word "Victorian" on the cover convinced me that I was not going to enjoy this book, and goodness . . . a housekeeper and an Inspector teaming up to solve a murder? It all just seemed a little too quaint. As it turns out, this is a great puzzling murder mystery. It's not just the housekeeper and inspector sleuthing for clues, but also the cook, the coachman and other "household help". A great book to read on a cold, winter's night. I now look forward to reading more in the series.

This is a much better outing for Mrs. Jeffries after the previous one (Mrs. Jeffries Takes Stock). I found the plot tighter and the mystery was better. It was still fairly easy to determine who did the murder, but the motive actually surprised. I read these books though for the characters. Ms. Brightwell's characters are charming and fun and it's great to see them develop through each successive book. A nice little cozy to keep you warm at night.

The focus of the book was in solving the mystery, and the answer was fairly clever. 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 or the history.

Mrs. Jeffries on the Ball by Emily Brightwell is the fifth book in the Mrs. Jeffries cozy mystery series. Mrs. Jeffries is the housekeeper for Scotland Yard Inspector Witherspoon, who doesn't have the best investigative skills, so she, along with the rest of the household staff, actually solve each of his cases through careful interviewing without ever letting on to the Inspector or the Yard. When a woman is murdered at a ball honoring the Queen's Jubilee, suspicion falls on her fellow members of a literary circle. The case is tricky when at first it seems that no one would have motive for her murder and then it turns out nearly everyone did! Brightwell continues developing the characters of the household, adding in some detail about Smythe, the coachman, that would shake up the entire staff if they found out, plus Witherspoon's obnoxious cousin is visiting, making investigation ever more difficult. Brightwell does a superb job of writing this cozy series. Each novel focuses on slow development of the characters while giving readers a look at class distinctions of the late 1800s. Brightwell slips up with a mistake in the plot. When Smythe informs the house of the murder, he tells them how he interviewed the victim's carriage driver, gaining information about her mood before the dance. Later in the novel, Wiggins shares that he discovered that a young boy rode with her to the ball, so Smythe asks where the victim hired her coach for the night and says that he will interview the driver. The clue is dropped at that point and doesn't add anything to the discovery of the murderer, but this major error makes this a frustrating read, not quite up to the standard of the rest of the series.