Death at Blenheim Palace (2005)

Enjoyable little historical fiction mystery series. ( )

Eleventh in the historical Victorian/Edwardian mysteries featuring Lady Kathryn and Sir Charles Sheridan in early 1900’s England. Kathryn is an American from a poor family with an alter ego named Beryl Bardwell, who is a writer of “penny dreadful” novels. Charles is a Lord with a bent toward photography, forensics and all things scientific, and they have been married since book two and solving mysteries together for awhile now. This book finds them as guests of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, another American-and-English couple, with a couple of interesting disappearances from Blenheim Palace on their hands. This one wasn’t much of a mystery, like most cozies, and I did figure it out fairly early on, but it was good to revisit these characters and time period after quite a prolonged absence, and I enjoyed the story anyway. One thing I did find annoying in this book was that the author had portrayed Kathryn/Beryl almost as a dual personality with Beryl quoted as “thinking” certain thoughts inside Kathryn’s head, and Kathryn sometimes answering her verbally! It was rather unsettling at times, and a bit too weird for the character. There’s only one of these left in the series—the author has called at least a temporary halt to the series as she concentrates on her other series (“Robin Paige” is actually a writing team with the books co-written by Susan Wittig Albert and her husband Bill.) ( )