A Murder Most Inconvenient at the Assembly Rooms

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Murder, Love & Ghosts

I am the narrator of this book. I have already carried every footstep, every whispered aside, every inconvenient corpse, and now they have decided I should also persuade you to read it. This is what happens when one proves reliable.

What I carried was a cozy Regency murder with a ghost who refuses to mind his own death. Bath’s Assembly Rooms are polished, candlelit, and brimming with manners, until the dancing master collapses mid-figure and immediately reappears floating above his own body, deeply offended and tethered to Miss Adelaide Finchwick, a woman whose greatest social crime is noticing things. I spend much of my time ensuring she notices them quietly, because being seen talking to the dead is frowned upon, even in polite society.

While everyone else works very hard to believe nothing dreadful has happened, I watch Adelaide navigate whispered accusations, precedence cards, suspicious glasses of wine, and a ghost who remembers his posture rules better than his final hour. I also keep an eye on Mr Julian Ashcombe, a magistrate’s clerk with a talent for inconvenient questions and a calm manner that suggests he will not be satisfied with “an attack of the heart,” however convenient that would be for everyone involved. Including me.

If Adelaide fails, she risks her position, her reputation, and her ability to eat indoors without being stared at. If the truth does not come out, the wrong people will feel safe, the right people will feel foolish, and the ghost will remain hovering at her shoulder correcting her spine forever, which I would not wish on anyone.

Perfect for readers who enjoy clue-rich, socially tangled mysteries, sharp observational heroines, dry British wit, and supernatural elements treated as an administrative nuisance rather than a spectacle, I see you, do not argue. This is a non-gory, historically grounded cozy mystery with a closed-door, slow-burn romance and a satisfying HFN, solved through observation, conversation, and the careful rearranging of polite lies.

It is a complete, stand-alone case set in a wider world where deaths are inconvenient and ghosts file complaints. I have already done the heavy lifting. You may as well click Look Inside and let me get on with it.