Collect The Governess Engineered By Evelyn Hervey Issued As Textbook

by Sheila Mitchell

Description: The mansion housed a murder
No,Northumberland Gardens was in every way the picture of Victorian respectability, William Thackerton made sure of that: he was a tyrannical man who ruled his home with an iron willuntil the warm July night when he retired to the library for a cigar and brandyand was found brutally murdered in his easy chair.

Scotland Yards chief suspect is the family governess, Miss Harriet Unwin, who had both the means and opportunity, plus a bloodstained sleeve.
Harriet Unwin knows that she is innocentand that the only way to prove it is to unmask the real killer or face the gallows.
But the first thing her investigation uncovers is another corpse

The Governess AKA The Case Of the Theft of the Decapitated Sugar Mouse.


Circumlocutional in execution, this paddedout cosy was just the job for a Maundy Thursday baking day it's his nibs birthday tomorrow.
A baseline three star result, Lordy, I became quite invested towards the end, even though we had all known the result from the near beginning.


I do have the other two in this trilogy in a storage box,

Hat Steaming



Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade Inspector Ghote,
The Murder of the Maharajah Inspector Ghote,
Inspector Ghote's First Case Inspector Ghote,

The Governess Off the shelf for good.
Not a keeper. Slow and predictable. Obvious who did the murders, but why was a little bit of a surprise, After a slow and rather dull tale the very end was quite climactic, The cover was by far better than the story, A Victorian cozy mystery written by H, R. F. Keating under a pen name, This is the first in a trilogy, It was a fun, light, quick read for me, Overdramatic and unrealistic, especially in the portrayal of the stubborn police inspector, However, it was a pleasant romp with lots of atmosphere and dealings with the downstairs goings on in a Victorian household.
The mystery was not too complicated being more involved in proving the governess's innocence than in a real secret of who the perpetrator was but, the

reveal for motive at the end was amusing.
Nothing too stimulating but an entertaining cozy read to which I'd most certainly read the sequels, coming soon For such a short book it was a slough of boring and repetitive conversations and internal monologue from a plain as paper heroine.
No voice, and a simplistic mystery, I have to confess that H R F writes at his best when writing inspector Ghote books, In can only say the end is better than most the book,.stars. I really wanted to like this one better, The first few chapters were charming and looked like a promising setup for a mystery, but once it got fairly started, it was the way the mystery investigation was handled that frustrated me a bit.
Perhaps I've been spoiled a bit by reading so many topnotch Golden Age mysteries, Both Miss Unwin's investigations and Sergeant Drewd's seemed awfully haphazard, each new inquiry prompted by something that had just handily turned up.
And the scene where Miss Unwin thinks and thinks and can't imagine a single possible motive for anybody in the housegood heavens, girl, use your imagination! I could think of thousands!

And then, I knew who the murderer was right from the scene where the murder was discovered.
I didn't know the motive till it was explained later on, but I knew who, Oh, well! The Victorian setting was nicely done, and it's a clean read too, a pleasant surprise for a later mids book.
The light oldfashioned style is a nice fit for the era of the story I actually wouldn't have guessed it was written in the 's without being told.
So if you're looking for a pleasant mystery but don't expect anything too challenging, The Governess is a pretty nice one.


Incidentally, the Bloomsbury Reader ebook edition is evidently missing a sizeable chunk of conversation near the end of Chapter.
The gist of it is mentioned in the subsequent chapter, so the only thing you really miss out on is apparently the fleshing out of a supporting character/suspect.
A detective story set in the Victorian times, A bleak copycat of Conan Doyle's and Christie's style, leaves much to be desired, However, the plot is original, Might help to kill time aboard a plane or train, When Harriet Unwin takes the position of governess in the welltodo Thackerton household, it would seem that fortune has smiled on her at last.
That is until William Thackerton is found stabbed, and Harriet accused of murder, . .

In a desperate attempt to prove her innocence, she embarks on a daring scheme to save herself from the gallows.
In doing so she uncovers the dark secrets which the family is trying to hide behind a veneer of Victorian respectability.
Pseudonym of sitelink H. R. F. Keating. Pseudonym of sitelink H. R. F. Keating. sitelink.