Murder in Masquerade

Amelia Amesbury, the widowed Countess of Amesbury, occupies herself by anonymously writing an advice column for a London newspaper. Her hobby is complicated when Lady Marielle, the sister of Marquis Simon Bainbridge, writes to Amelia, unaware of the columnist’s identity. Marielle says she intends to elope to Gretna Green with a man her brother knows to be a cad and a confidence man. Simon begs Amelia for help when his sister refuses to listen to reason. Then Marielle’s beau is murdered, and Amelia and Simon vow to find the killer. While attending theater events, garden parties, and even a high-society croquet tournament, the two uncover clues and narrow the field of suspects. Ella Lynch narrates Winters’s sequel to Murder in Postscript, supplying posh British accents for the upper crust and broad Cockney accents for those on the outskirts of high society. Although the plot is simple and the characters rather underdeveloped, the mystery entertains.