Murder Afloat on the Packet for Respectable Invalids: A Cozy Regency Mystery of Murder, Love & Ghosts
Marisa Paxon
I am the narrator of this book. I carried the whole wretched business, corpse, courtship, canal mud, shawls, hampers, and all, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Very well: here is your ghost-haunted Regency cozy mystery on an overfull packet boat for respectable invalids, which is exactly as civilised and disastrous as it sounds.
Julia Haviland boards intending to observe fellow travellers and improve a handbook for women obliged to go anywhere without six brothers and a carriage house. Instead she gets one dead superintendent under a fallen hamper, one exasperatingly competent lock inspector, and one murdered man who has the indecency to rise again and complain about the luggage arrangements. I then have to carry her through a boat stuffed with quarrelsome invalids, altered labels, private letters, dreadful cabin politics, and the alarming inconvenience of attraction in close quarters. Nothing sharpens romance like murder and upholstery, apparently.
If Julia fails, a killer walks off the packet, an innocent young woman’s private life is torn open before half the canal, and she is left looking unbalanced while taking investigative instructions from a dead bureaucrat with opinions on berth allocation. I assure you, I suffered every minute of it. You, however, may enjoy the spectacle of a clever widow, a clue-riddled murder aboard a moving boat, and a hero who believes the impossible because she is the one saying it. Annoyingly admirable of him.
Perfect for readers who like witty historical mysteries, prickly slow-burn attraction, ghosts who are more nuisance than nightmare, and women who solve crimes while everyone else is still rearranging their shawls.
This is a complete, self-contained Regency mystery with a clue-rich investigation, a satisfying logical reveal, non-gory violence, and a closed-door slow-burn romance with an HEA. In other words: cozy, sharp, romantic, and only as haunted as necessary.
Open the book and come aboard. I have already done the hard part; you may as well enjoy the voyage.
