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I woke up late today. I just slept through my alarm clock. Never have I been more glad to be working at home because of the pandemic because my little slip up went by unnoticed. Silver linings I guess. I'm currently filing papers in my office. I guess I went through a stage where I wouldn't toss anything just in case but it's time for some of this stuff to go. I've reorganized my office trying to find a system that works and I think I did find one. It's working out so far, but it's mostly a weekly to-do list and I get to it as I get to it. It's slightly unstructured but it's so when I have a good day I can work a little longer and when I have a bad day I can take off. Then my work won't suffer. I read this book back in August. I picked it up at the bookstore because it was a mystery set in a new-to-me time period for mysteries. The majority of my murder-mystery books are modern ones, I'm dipping my toe into the more historical settings. This book is also set in England and America.  Title: Lady Takes The Case (Manor Cat Mysteries #1) Author: Eliza Casey Page Number: 298 pages (paperback) Genre: mystery, historical fiction, fiction Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime, an imprint of Penguin Random House Year: 2019 England 1912. Danby Hall is the only home Lady Cecilia Bates has ever known. Despite the rigid rules of etiquette and her mother the Countess of Avebury's fervent desire to see her married off, Lady Cecilia can't imagine life anywhere else. But now, with an agricultural depression sweeping the countryside, the Bates family's possession of the hall is suddenly in peril. A possible solution arrives in the form of the imperious American heiress Annabel Clarke. The Earl and Countess of Avebury are determined that Cecilia's brother, Patrick, will win Annabel's hand in marriage--and her fortune along with it. To help the lackluster Patrick in this pursuit, the Bates and their staff arrange a grand house party upon the heiress's arrival. When a guest dies after sipping from a glass meant for Annabel, it's clear the Bates have a more poisonous problem on their hands than a lack of chemistry. As the scandal seizes Danby, Cecilia sets out to find the culprit, with help from Annabel's maid, Jane, and Jane's curiously intelligent cat, Jack. After the poison that someone had stashed away inside the manor is discovered, Cecilia is left with two possibilities: Either a resident of Danby snapped and tried to kill the arrogant heiress, or the threat is coming from one of their guests, who would love to see the Bates family's decline become permanent. I would note that this books is a little closer to a cozy mystery feeling than anything else. It isn't quite a full on cozy mystery (at least to me) but it's like 85% cozy mysteries. The synopsis on the back of my book seems to be different than the one of goodreads (because of what I commented in my notes). The goodreads synopsis is much better than the one I have. The note I wrote is "why the cat gets named in the blurb and not the maid is anyone's guess" but that seems to have changed. Or I misread it heavily. Basically Jane is far more integral to the plot than the blurb hints at. The beginning of the book introduces the Earl and Countess of Avebury. While I know why there are Earls in the UK and not Counts/Comtes, I still see the titles so mismatched. Duke/Duchess vs. Earl/Countess. The Avebury are Earl/Countess and broke. Broke by rich British people standards of the Gilded Age. They have a huge house, land, servants/staff, and power but alas...no money-money. What's a titled family to do? The Avebury group includes the parents, the older son (a horticulturist or scientist of some degree) and a daughter, the blurbed Cecilia. The son is named Patrick, which for some reason is a name that I don't associate with the British nobility. I guess it could be but this isn't my area of expertise. Patrick is the sacrificial goat for this story. He's to be married to an American heiress named Annabel Clarke, originally from the West Coast of the U.S. He's unsure but willing to give his family room to breathe and we assume Annabel is willing to marry for the title. I thought this was overall interesting as Eliza Casey is reaching back into real historical precedent with the 'Dollar Princesses' that married (sometimes unhappily) into the British aristocracy. I know Winston Churchill's mother was one of these women as well. I honestly was unsure going in as I find the whole 'Dollar Princess' story to be really sad. I'm not sure American husbands of that stature would have been better but no one wants an unhappy marriage. The Smithsonian Channel had a whole series on them (and then they also featured some other ladies kinda of the era, plus Grace Kelly, etc.). I am slightly amused to know that the women that married into the British aristocracy weren't always thought good enough to marry into the American "elite" (i.e. The Knickerbockers).
The book changes setting after the introduction of the Avebury family. We're introduced to Jane, a maid at a hotel in America. She's assigned as a personal maid to the servantless Annabel Clarke, who has arrived to the city in a tizzy. She's about to set sail across the Atlantic to meet her possible future husband and his family. I didn't think much of Annabel at first meeting, she was shallow and somewhat unlikable. I should stop calling them the Avebury family as their last name is Bates. It's Lady Cecilia Bates, whatever title Patrick Bates, etc. I'm still probably going to call them the Aveburys because that's how I wrote it in my notes for some odd reason. Anyways, Annabel finally arrives in England after some slight disaster at sea. The Avebury's throw a sumptuous dinner party hoping to entice her into staying and marrying Patrick. During the dinner, a guest seated by Annabel accidental drinks from her untouched glass, and drops dead. It's discovered that the glass has been poisoned. It seems that someone is out to murder Annabel so the police are called for. Cecilia confides in Annabel's maid, Jane, about the murder and between the two of them (and Jane's cat named Jack) they start solving the murder. Quite frankly, Cecilia is supposed to be the main character in the book with Jane as a supporting figure (who can go behind the scenes far easier than Cecilia can). In reality, the two almost had equal importance. I would say that I found the book quite easy to read. The mystery took a little while to begin but once it did I thought it was well plotted. I thought the conversations between characters were really realistic. I know some aspects of British history or British peerage stuff but not enough to say if this was correct or not. I didn't notice anything wrong there, so I assume Eliza Casey did research. I really only notice if it's glaring. The things that didn't work for me that the book was more of a cozy mystery, which I don't tend to love. Cozy mysteries tend to ramble a lot more and have more information than I need. Some people love that though, that's obviously a personal thing. I also thought the twist was really apparent (granted, I had just read another book with the same twist. It might not have been that obvious). The cat has a mention in the blurb (and in the subtitle) but Jack the Cat isn't that prominent in the story. I wasn't overly awed by the writing but it wasn't bad. I almost felt that the author was holding back to make the book more cozy and easily to please everyone. I could be wrong on that, but I kept expecting her to dazzle me and instead she kept it really safe (with the writing, the plot, the twists of the mystery, etc.). I had this down as a solid three star on Goodreads. Sometimes I can find an excerpt of the book on the publisher or author's website, but all I found was that Eliza Casey is a pseudonym. This isn't totally abnormal and some quick searching found that Eliza is actually Amanda McCabe.
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