Murder on the Final Reel at Primrose Studios

A Cozy Edwardian Mystery of Love and Murder

Lights, camera, corpse; Primrose Studios is meant to uplift the nation’s morals, not leave a patron strangled in the wardrobe between the sackcloth and the velvet. Respectable pictures are hard enough to sell without a moral reformer dying in the costumes and threatening to ruin the box office from beyond the grave.

Clara Ashcombe, junior scenario writer and reluctant conscience of London’s most improving picture house, spends her days trimming sins for the censors and adding railings to staircases. When Miss Temperance Vale of the Society for the Improvement of Modern Amusements turns up dead upstairs with an inconvenient ribbon at her throat, Clara and studio head Nathaniel Vyner must untangle motives in a building constructed for pretending. Half the suspects are in costume, the ledgers are making creative choices, the Yard inspector has noticed Clara’s alarming fondness for facts, and the papers are very keen on a good, hypocritical scandal. If Clara fails, Primrose will lose its patronage, its reputation, and the found family she has accidentally acquired among ladders, lamps, and impossible actors.

Perfect for readers who enjoy cozy historical mysteries, early cinema shenanigans, dry banter between equals, morally conflicted heroines, and very stubborn attraction that keeps pace with the clues. Expect a fair play mystery, non gory death, and a closed door slow burn romance with a happy for now ending, all set in an Edwardian film studio where the dust, the hymns, and the titles are doing their best to behave. Take your seat in the dark and see whether Primrose Studios survives its first corpse.