Book Review: Murder at the Majestic Hotel by Clara McKenna (Stella and Lyndy Mysteries #4)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Stella, Lyndy, and a good mystery

Cons: Meandering start to plot, missed some of the other regulars

The Bottom Line:

Honeymoon, murder

Missed the other regulars

But still a good book

Honeymoon Interrupted but a Not So Sweet Death

I really had intended to get to Murder at the Majestic Hotel sooner.  I love Clara McKenna’s Stella and Lyndy Mysteries, and I was anxious to see where this book would take them.  But other books kept jumping in front of it on my to be read schedule.  Finally, I was able to join them for their honeymoon.

If you aren’t familiar with this series, it features American heiress Stella Kendrick Lyndhurst and her new husband, British Lord “Lyndy” Lyndhurst in 1905 England.  Theirs was an arranged marriage, but in the months between when they met (and discovered their first dead body), and their marriage (which ended the last book in the series), they have fallen in love.

This book picks up a couple of days after the third book ended.  The newlyweds have just arrived in York for their honeymoon, but they discover that, despite their reservation for the honeymoon suite, it has been taken by someone else for the night.  The interloper is Horace Wingrove, owner of England’s most popular chocolate company.  The next morning, Wingrove is dead, and Stella and Lyndy can’t help but worry that this might have been their fate had their reservation been honored.  But Stella sees a few things that don’t quite make sense to her.  Will she figure out what is really going on?

I’ve mentioned how quickly this book picks up after the last book on purpose.  As fans of the series who have read book three know, some major events happened in that book.  Well, besides the wedding.  As a result, I highly recommend you read that book first.  This book has some spoilers in it by necessity.  It would have been very strange not to mention any of that in this book.

Since this book is not set at Lyndy’s home, we don’t see as many returning characters as normal.  I found I missed them more than I thought I would.  They have provided some great sub-plots in previous books that have kept me hooked, and I missed that here.  Plus, I’m curious to see how some of those relationships grow.  But I’m sure we’ll see that in the next book in the series.

Having said that, the characters we meet here are good, and there are some returning characters I enjoyed seeing again.  Obviously, Stella and Lyndy are the stars, and I loved getting to watch their relationship continue to grow.

The plot wandered a bit at the beginning, and I had a harder time than normal getting into this book.  But I did eventually get hooked as Stella and Lyndy continued to investigate.  While Stella is the better amateur detective of the pair, Lyndy does contribute to the story once again, and I love watching them team up.  The solution made perfect sense to me.

It was nice to visit a different part of Edwardian England, and a small part of reality crept into the book.  Of course, it was exploited for fictional purposes since this is historical fiction.  The author explains all of that at the end.

As always, the story is told from multiple points of view – mostly Stella and Lyndy’s, but some of the other characters get their turn in the spotlight.  It’s always easy to tell when we are getting a point of view break.

While this book might not have been quite as strong as the earlier books, I still enjoyed Murder at the Majestic Hotel.  Fans of historical mysteries will be glad they picked up this series.

Enjoy the rest of the Stella and Lyndy Mysteries.