Customer Reviews

Murder Has No Class (A Bellehaven House Mystery)

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Meredith Llewellyn has her hands full as headmistress of the Bellehaven Finishing School for Young Ladies trying to teach her female students proper manners, as well as making sure her assistant, Roger Platt, keeps his hands off said students. The last thing she needs or wants is a visit from a ghost who wants her to solve a murder, but that is just what happens when the ghost of Lord James Stalham appears to her. Stalham was accused of murdering his father and hanged for the crime but the more his ghost visits Meredith the more she becomes convinced of his innocence. Now, Meredith has even more work on her hands as he tries to not only solve the murder, but deal with a couple of housemaids who are determined to be suffragettes and a school full of girls who don't always behave as they should.

"Murder Has No Class is the third, and unfortunately last, book in Rebecca Kent's (a.k.a. Kate Kingsbury) delightful Bellehaven cozy mystery series. It is a shame really, because I thought this was the strongest book of the series as Kent seemed really comfortable with the characters at this point. As she did in the Pennyfoot Hotel and Manor House mysteries, Kent/Kingsbury populates the book with strong female characters - Meredith, her fellow teachers Felicity and Essie, and housemaids Olivia and Grace (Olivia more than Grace). Because this is the last book in the series Kent able to put in the book a few things about Felicity and Essie that helps explain why they sometimes act the way they do, which helps make them stronger characters. I even found myself accepting a possible Meredith/Stuart Hamilton romance - something I wasn't fond of in the two previous books. Besides the rich character development in the book there is a wonderful sense of humor throughout the book and readers will eagerly look forward to the events at dart tournament. The mystery and paranormal elements are well done and readers will be surprised and somewhat saddened when the killer is revealed.

Murder has no class is the excellently done final book in an all too short, cozy mystery series. The first two books in the series are High Marks for Murder: A Bellehaven House Mystery and Finished Off (Bellehaven House Mysteries).

I can't say I'm very surprised to learn that this is the final book in this series, which never seemed to quite know what it wanted to be. I loved the author's Pennyfoot Hotel series, and was very disappointed when she left that one for the Manor House Mysteries. The secondary characters in the Hotel series were routinely excellent, and made the reader want to know more about them --and their lives off-stage, so to speak. The setting lent itself to a variety of plots, which the author provided with humor and sensitivity. The Manor House series was problematic, too, (at least for me) but the characters were as endearing as the Hotel staff. It was fun to see who would cause the most trouble this time around or what new adventures might be unveiled.

I did read all three of the Bellehaven House Series, but combining mystery, paranormal and romance in one relatively short book is really tricky. The premise of the first one made a certain amount of sense -- after all, the ghost had been a teacher at the school. The second book's ghost was rather far out, but not nearly as far out as this third book's spectre. Ghosts that have no connection to the house or anyone living/working there seemed not very believable to me.

Wrong-headed Olivia really needed a good set-down, which she never received, so she kept on being wrong-headed, and dragging poor Grace down right along with her. I'm sure that had there been another book, the school would have had to be closed because of the turmoil caused by these would-be suffragettes. But perhaps then, too, Head Mistress Meredith would have had to decide between her two possible suitors, the owner Stuart or the policeman Edward.

I couldn't understand why as Head Mistress, she couldn't manage to exert her authority enough to be rid of the two totally unfit characters Platt/Pratt and Miss Montrose. The other two teachers, Felicity and Essie fit perfectly into their environment. And the girl students? Well, girls will be girls.

Perhaps Bellehaven could be used for another purpose, with the same cast of characters, except for no ghosts, please. The author knows this time period as though she lived then, and I, for one would be most happy to read another series by her.

Third and the last in Bellehaven House Mysteries featuring Meredith Llewellyn, headmistress of a finishing fchool for young ladies...who sees ghosts. Setting is England in 1905 in the midst of the Women's Rights movement.

The main plot is who killed Stalham if his son is innocent, secondary plots are the assistant Tom Platt who is too friendly with the girls and just might be related to the owner, Felicity and Essie who are Meredith's sidekicks, and two trouble-seeking maids Grace and Olivia who want to stage a suffrage demonstration in the town pub and they recruit the school girls to participate, and then there is the owner of Bellehaven, Stuart Hamilton, it becomes clear he likes Meredith as more than the competent headmistress. When it is revealed that their is going to be a big dart tournament in the same bar and time as the demonstration the reader foresees the coming trainwreck and the question is how will everybody get out of the pending disaster.

The mystery itself supplies a limited number of suspects and you try to figure which one actually had motive and time to kill the elder Lord Stalham before the son rushed into the library upon hearing the gun shot. It is somewhat like a game of CLUE. The killer isn't too difficult to detect. This will appeal to those who just want something very light to read and not work hard at.

This is a light and easy read that doesn't get bogged down with too much sensibility. If you like light cozy mysteries set in England this might be a book for you.

Read the complete review here:
[...]

Tired of the daily news of the world? Read too many grim thrillers or suspenseful detective stories lately? If you are looking for a change of pace, for an amusing, diverting traditional mystery in the best of the cozy fashion, I give you Rebecca Kent. Author of more than twenty-five novels, this one is set in the Cotswolds of Edwardian England when women sought suffrage and the keepers of tradition sought desperately to rein in rambunctious but upper-class young women.

The novel is set at the Bellhaven Finishing School, run by Headmistress Meredith Llewellyn, with the assistance of a staff of tutors. Llewellyn's tasks are complicated by her extra-sensibility to the ghost of a hanged man who demands her attention to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, some of the girls and some of the servants are anxious to prove their support for the burgeoning suffragette movement in England.

Ms. Kent has got pretty much everything just right. The characterizations, the tone, the emotional turmoil are all in precise keeping with the time and with the story. The principal characters are classy and distinct and any reader tuned in to the traditional mystery will have a pleasurable experience with this novel.

I read the whole book, but, on the whole, unless a book is exceptional, I do not want a ghost to be what moves the plot along in a story. This is the beginning of a historical series that takes place in a boarding school in England. At the end a new ghost is introduced by the previous ghost so I presume the entire series will have supernatural happenings.