Mostly Murders

The magnanimous patriarch, the gracious widow, the glittering professional, the glamorous vamp, the girlish ingénue…

Colonel Hadrian Russell is an institution in the Britannia, keeping court in the London club where he is presiding as acting club president. Almost as famous as the Colonel are his four sons’ widows, Lady Alice, forever in widow’s black, Madam Eliot, forceful and efficient, Flora Grace, beautiful and confident and Lucy, young and girlish.

Eric Peterkins is the newly appointed club secretary to the Britannia. As the child of an English father and a Chinese mother, there are those in the club who disapprove of him, but with Colonel Russell’s approval of Eric, all protests die away. But Eric doesn’t get to enjoy his job as club secretary for long before tragedy strikes. When a long-lost friend of the family appears at the Britannia and begins to court one of the widows, death once again falls upon the Russell family, claiming none other than Colonel Russell himself and throwing suspicion on his extended family.

Shocked by the death of a man he admired, Eric at first tries to resist investigating, but before long he is knee-deep in a puzzling mystery taking him from London clubs to Paris hotels and Swiss sanatoriums, trying to stay ahead of Inspector Benedict Crane, a Scotland Yard detective whose obsession with all things Chinese stirs complicated emotions in Eric, who has very little connection to his own Chinese ancestry.

A Golden Age, historical mystery set in 1925, blending themes of identity, myths, race and gender with the still heavy veil of the trauma of the Great War, not just for the men who served, but also for the women who were left behind. The mystery is intricate and well plotted and paced, with interesting suspects and characters, a slow but efficient build-up of suspense culminating in an action-packed confrontation, and a very satisfying solution.

Book 2 in the Eric Peterkin series. Many thanks to Inkshares for this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. A Pretender’s Murder releases on February 24th, 2026.

Historical mystery – Historical fiction