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Group Discussions About This Book
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November 2025 group read - Winner!
By Judy · 20 posts · 32 views
By Judy · 20 posts · 32 views
last updated Sep 17, 2025 08:43AM
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Sept 25: Lonesome Road (#3 Miss Silver Mysteries) by Patricia Wentworth
By Susan · 16 posts · 16 views
By Susan · 16 posts · 16 views
last updated Sep 19, 2025 01:03PM
What Members Thought
It is 1908 and Lady Emily Hardcastle, and her maid, Florence Armstrong, have decided to settledown in a country house near the village of Littington Cotterill. It soon becomes apparent that neither are quite as traditional as might be expected. There are lots of hints about various adventures overseas and it is also clear that the women are friends, rather than servant and mistress. Referring to each other as, “ageing employer,” and “tiny servant,” they are very much a team and raise eyebrows by
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Good stuff, dialogue full of gentle acerbity, interesting main characters (widowed Lady and her diminutive but capable ladies' maid), English country setting - but it breaks the mould in fun ways: the country house is a new build, Lady Hardcastle has a racketty background spying for the Empire, Armstrong the maid has been trained in martial arts by a Shaolin monk, the local Inspector of Police actually welcomes their help. The period setting (1908) is well done in an understated way - it's becom
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I thought that the mystery was pretty good but the main characters, Lady Hardcastle and her maid Florence Armstrong, while a pleasure to read about, didn't strike me as being very realistic for 1908.
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Despite the title, this book is a romp through the Gloucestershire countryside in search of murderers and jewel thieves. Lady Hardcastle and Flo are definitely not your usual cozy detectives. A light read with some fun characters.
It is 1908 and Lady Emily Hardcastle and her maid Florence Armstrong are renting a house in the country intending to settle down to a quiet life. They have had a an adventurous life together - as gradually emerges during this and subsequent books in the series and they're hoping for something a but more sedate.
But fate has something else in store for them when they come across a dead body in the woods soon after they move in. Lady Emily is by nature curious and Florence likes to know what is go ...more
But fate has something else in store for them when they come across a dead body in the woods soon after they move in. Lady Emily is by nature curious and Florence likes to know what is go ...more
Jun 20, 2017
Rachel Burke
rated it
did not like it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
borrowed-and-read
Just horrible
How bad is this book? So bad it took me nearly 54 hours to get back to reading the last 15 minutes. So bad that I read 11 books in a week to avoid going back to it after the first quarter.
Issues -
It was written with liberal usage of a thesaurus to the point of sheer ridiculousness. I have an excellent vocabulary and the liberal arts graduate degrees to back it up and I was routinely looking up words. That's fine if I'm reading for a class, and in small bits it's fine when I'm read ...more
How bad is this book? So bad it took me nearly 54 hours to get back to reading the last 15 minutes. So bad that I read 11 books in a week to avoid going back to it after the first quarter.
Issues -
It was written with liberal usage of a thesaurus to the point of sheer ridiculousness. I have an excellent vocabulary and the liberal arts graduate degrees to back it up and I was routinely looking up words. That's fine if I'm reading for a class, and in small bits it's fine when I'm read ...more
For me this was a book of four overly-long cozy stories. The two main characters were entertaining at first but that was wearing a bit thin as the stories went on. The first story was quite well done, even if it contained a lot of guesswork. The fact the police took so kindly to these two ladies was rather unbelievable, but I suppose that is how cozy stories work. The second story was truly well over the top, the third not quite so fantastic, and the fourth did at least explain how these charact
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Returned the book because the audible narrator was really boring
Aug 10, 2021
Lesley
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mystery-cozy,
read-in-2021
