{"id":2078,"date":"2015-12-31T17:53:13","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=2078"},"modified":"2015-12-31T17:53:13","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:53:13","slug":"mystery-review-the-scandal-at-23-mount-street-by-clara-benson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/12\/mystery-review-the-scandal-at-23-mount-street-by-clara-benson\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery review: The Scandal at 23 Mount Street by Clara Benson"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"big450Box\">\n<div class=\"big450BoxBody\">\n<div class=\"big450BoxContent\">\n<div class=\"reviewText mediumText description readable\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1437654583l\/25895216.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"221\" height=\"332\" \/>The ninth and penultimate outing in the <em>Angela Marchmont<\/em> series of murder mysteries set in the twenties is a complete change of pace. After the light-hearted, almost flippant, tone of the last few books, suddenly life takes a very grave turn for Angela, when her past comes back to haunt her and she has a fight for her very life on her hands.<\/p>\n<p>The mystery this time isn\u2019t so much in whodunit, which is almost incidental, but how on earth Angela is going to get out of the mess she\u2019s in. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s much of a spoiler if I say that I never doubted that she would get out of it, but even though I guessed something of how it would go, there was a surprise in store at the end. In fact, there were a lot of revelations about the past, although one of them I\u2019d guessed a while back.<\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t the riotous entertainment of some of the previous books &#8211; the tone was too sombre for that. Angela makes some difficult choices in this book, and the very different plot meant that the writing style felt a little denser than usual. However, the courtroom scenes were very well done, Angela\u2019s friends rose to the occasion splendidly, and the biggest reveal of the lot was suitably dramatic. I can\u2019t honestly say I enjoyed this as much as the earlier books &#8211; it was too traumatic for that &#8211; but the constant tension kept me on the edge of my seat, I tore through it in record time and I very much liked the way it ended [*], so that\u2019s another five stars and straight on to the tenth and final book in the series.<\/p>\n<p>[*] The reported tragedy near the end? Nope. Don\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"review-like\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"review-follow\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"big450BoxBottom\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ninth and penultimate outing in the Angela Marchmont series of murder mysteries set in the twenties is a complete change of pace. After the light-hearted, almost flippant, tone of the last few books, suddenly life takes a very grave turn for Angela, when her past comes back to haunt her and she has a fight for her very life on her hands. The mystery this time isn\u2019t so much in whodunit, which is almost incidental, but how on earth Angela is going to get out of the mess she\u2019s in. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s much of a spoiler if I say that I never doubted that she would get out of it, but even though I guessed something of how it would go, there was a surprise in store at the end. In fact, there were a lot of revelations about the past, although one of them I\u2019d guessed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[150],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2080,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions\/2080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}