The Duke, the Ghost, and Murder By Entirely Mortal Means

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Love and Murder

De: Marisa Paxon

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled you through sea-mist, ruined stone, and the moral fibre of the British upper classes, and now “they” have decided I should also sell it. Naturally.

Welcome to Wynthorpe Castle, perched on the North Sea cliffs like a threat. Miss Elinor Gresham, hired expert in manufactured hauntings, arrives with lenses, gauze, lamp oil, and the calm competence of a woman who can make a drawing room scream on schedule. The Duke of Wynthorpe wants a harbour, a handful of wealthy subscribers to pay for it, and a weekend of tastefully alarming chapel theatrics to keep everyone entertained and, ideally, compliant.

Unfortunately, someone takes Elinor’s tidy little world of angles and expectation and uses it to stage something far less theatrical. A man goes out into the night in his shirtsleeves. A light flares in the ruined chapel. A figure appears where no living person should. By morning, Silas Beckett is very much dead, and half the house is ready to blame a family ghost rather than admit that a perfectly ordinary murderer has been among them, breathing, lying, and wiping their boots on the same rugs.

Elinor, who refuses to be outmanoeuvred in her own profession, does what any sensible woman does when confronted with shrieking aristocrats and a corpse with dreadful timing: she starts counting. Footsteps, minutes, motives, money, and which perfectly respectable person is most eager to turn a murder into a melodrama. The Duke, who prefers ledgers to legends and finds feelings deeply inconvenient, insists on the truth even when it points unpleasantly close to home, or to his own heart.

A clue-rich Regency house-party murder mystery with a satisfying, logical reveal, plus a closed door slow-burn romance with an HEA, all with non-gory violence and more dry humour than is strictly decent.

Perfect for readers who like clever, practical heroines, prickly dukes with principles, stormy seaside settings, and a mystery that treats “ghosts” as a convenient excuse for human nastiness.

It is a complete, self-contained case in the Regency: Corpses and Courtship Club world, so you may begin here without fear of missing anything except your peace of mind. Now, go on, click Look Inside, and let us see whether you can spot the trick before Elinor does.