Murder on the Cornish Cliffs

December 1923. Ellie is getting ready to celebrate the Christmas holiday with the dearest people in her life: her fiancé, Detective Hugh Seldon; her butler, Clifford; and the lively ladies on her staff. But all that is turned on its ear when a letter arrives from a Mr. Godfrey Cunliffe, an old friend of Ellie’s Uncle Byron. He suspects his life is in danger, and he’s asking for assistance.

So Ellie and Clifford, along with the bulldog Gladstone and the ginger cat Tompkins, pack up the Rolls and head off to Cornwall, to Mr. Cunliffe’s ancestral home of Gwel an Mor. They arrive to find police cars in the drive and fear that they’re too late. But Mr. Cunliffe is unexpectedly alive and well. His gardener, Jerome St. Clair, has met an untimely end, and now Mr. Cunliffe fears St. Clair’s killer mistook the gardener for him. So he still fears for his life, but he’s less than pleased about having to resort to help from a woman. He isn’t much happier about help from a male servant, and sometimes it seems like he’d rather have no help at all.

There is so much to enjoy in this story! Gwel an Mor is a truly Gothic pile, complete with a layabout nephew and two dotty old aunts (who may or may not be as dotty as they seem). And there’s no shortage of skullduggery on the grounds. The gardens that St. Claire was hired to bring back to their former glory are really a hot mess, and what have the under-gardeners got up to in the bits that haven’t yet been cleared off? What about Mr. and Mrs. Liddicoat, the servants who came with the house? Cornwall has a past rich in smuggling. Are any or all of them up to old tricks in modern times, perhaps?

The nearby village offers loads of Cornish color, and it was delightful! I loved the Christmas traditions that the villagers shared with Ellie and Clifford, and how they jump right in and take part. The descriptions of the food were a lot of fun for me, too. Some sounded like things I might try, some not so much.

And I also loved the way Bright worked Hugh into the story. He can’t investigate a crime outside his jurisdiction, so they find a way to get around that. No, I’m not telling you how – read the book!

The lighthouse was another integral and interesting part of the story. Its history gives some insight into Cunliffe’s family, and the lighthouse keeper (Woon – just Woon) is able to share some useful details with Ellie and Clifford.

There’s no shortage of tight spots, either. Some, like Ellie driving the lumbering Rolls on narrow Cornish cliffside roads (I could picture Clifford clinging firmly to the “oh sh!t” handle above the window – would a Rolls have one of those, do you think?), are more comical than others, when I was truly concerned for our dynamic duo. But, as you probably figured, none of the tight spots are inescapable.

The murderer was not who I expected, and many things were not what they first appeared. Bright brings all the threads together in a most satisfactory conclusion, and now I’m left waiting eagerly for the next book in the series.

A Christmas setting, a house that’s a character in and of itself, witty banter between Eleanor and Clifford, twists and turns and fascinating characters – once again, Verity Bright has given us a charmer of a book! Eleanor Swift remains solidly on my list of favorite amateur sleuths.

Disclaimer: Thank to Bookouture and NetGalley for a review copy. All opinions here are mine, and I don’t say nice things about books I don’t actually like.