The Bookish Becca: Review: The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder (Book 1)

London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?

Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.

Believing that Mrs Ashton is genuine, grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother’s untimely death. But Lady Violet’s powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?

Uncovering this MP’s wicked crimes will put all three women in terrible danger…

To solve a shocking murder, look both sides of the grave.

“I loved this book! Victorian murder mystery meets "ghost" story, with delicious sprinklings of compassion and mischief…”

Caroline Day, author of Sunday Times Bestseller Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

Review

The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder: A Spooky Victorian Mystery by Stephen Cox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Victorian era is so well-suited to a cozy mystery. The time period that gave us Sherlock Holmes and fingerprinting just feels like the right place for a small group to uncover a crime. This book features a charming set of would-be spiritualists who con the cons they pursue. Mrs. Ashton and Mrs. Bradshaw make for quite the pair as they work to bring justice.

Steven Cox has a formal yet approachable prose that matches the era without being so stilted that it's unrelatable for modern audiences. His sense of humor buzzes in at regular intervals to keep the story from becoming too heavy. The plot is well-crafted and easy-to-follow without becoming convoluted.

Overall, a fun story with enough twists to ramp up the fun and characters you will care about.

View all my reviews

Purchase Links

https://stephencox.co.uk/books/upcoming/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crooked-Mediums-Guide-Murder-Victorian-ebook/dp/B0FLK68742/

https://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Mediums-Guide-Murder-Victorian-ebook/dp/B0FLK68742/

Exciting News: Book 2 in the Crooked Medium series is now available for pre-order!! - https://stephencox.co.uk/buy-terror/

Author Bio – My grandmother told me I read too much. I remember walking in the garden when I was small, telling myself stories. It was over thirty years of wanting to be a novelist before I tried… and succeeded.

The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder arose because I wanted to write about Britishness and specifically about Englishness; about our complex relationship with the past; I wanted leads who were morally grayer but still capable of kindness. It was time for a novel with queer leads. And in quite desperate times, I needed to write something with some uplift. It’s the first book intended to start a series.

My first books, Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds are set in the 1960s USA. It’s about Gene and Molly, a childless couple, and Cory, the little boy from the stars that they adopt, under such challenging circumstances. The books got lovely reviews and are available on both sides of the Atlantic.

I spent nearly all my childhood in Bristol, and I’m now an adoptive Londoner. I live with my partner, and it’s the best thing our two adult children come back from time to time. Our garden rages wild.