Of Manners and Murder

In Hastings’s 1885 London, “Dear Miss Hermione” is one of the most popular Agony Aunt newspaper columns, and Violet Manville is shocked when her Aunt Adelia announces she’s running off to the continent with her latest beau and leaving the advice column in Violet’s capable hands. Although Adelia persuades Violet that she can handle anything that comes up, the first letter Violet receives is from a nervous young wife who claims that someone is trying to kill her. Violet wants to assure her correspondent that it’s all in her imagination, so she takes the train to the village where the letters were posted, to talk in person. She’s too late, arriving during Ivy Armstrong’s funeral. While she investigates the clues Ivy left, Violet’s half-sister Sephora conducts a secret romance with a handsome man. When Sephora’s suitor disappears, she turns for advice to “Dear Miss Hermione.” In a surprising finale, the sisters’ investigations converge.