Coming-Out is Murder
While I have prioritized other series this year, I am still trying to work in as many of the Gilded Newport Mysteries from Alyssa Maxwell as I can. So I was happy to get to Murder at Ochre Court, the sixth entry.
This book picks up in July of 1898, a year after the events of book five. Emma Cross, our main character, has spent the previous year in New York City working for the New York Herald. She had hoped to spend the year working on real news stories, but instead she found herself once again covering society events. She’s returned to her native Newport, Rhode Island, to cover the coming-out ball of Cleo Cooper-Smith. But she also has another news story she is secretly hoping to work on. And she is considering returning to Newport full time, although she’s not sure how she’d bring in income if she did that.
All that takes a back burner after the coming-out ball, which was being held at Ochre Court. The house is one of the few getting in on the new technology of electricity. But the highlight of the evening is ruined when someone is electrocuted. Emma is friends with the electrician who was working on the cottage, and she feels compelled to clear his name of any wrong doing. The more Emma investigates, the more potential motives she finds. Can she figure out the truth?
The emergence of electricity as a new power source is not something I had really thought about. I just take it for granted. I appreciated how it played a part in this story. It amazed me how it parallels some of what we are seeing in our society with new technologies now. While those technologies might change, there truly is nothing new under the sun, is there?
But that was only one of the potential motives. There are plenty of others, and they kept me guessing until the end. While everything did make sense at the end, I felt like the plot was maybe a bit too complex, since there was a rush to explain things and a little more exposition than I felt we needed. But that is often the case with the series, so I was expecting it when I picked up this book.
We’ve had a love triangle up until this point. I was getting a bit frustrated with it in this book. Normally, I am patient since it is often less time for the characters than it is for us since books are often set months apart even if they are released years apart. In this case, it has been several years for the characters, and I am ready for Emma to have made her choice. Fortunately, I believe she has. We still have a bit more that needs to play out before it is all settled, but I can see the end of that coming.
One thing I love about this series is how the real-life people of the era rub elbows with the fictional characters so seamlessly. That is true again here. A large part of how successful this is is how real all the characters feel. And we got some updates on both the real people and the series characters who populate the books.
Murder at Ochre Court is another great entry in this historical mystery series. I’m not sure when I will get to revisit Gilded Newport, but I am definitely looking forward to a return visit.
Enjoy the rest of the Gilded Newport Mysteries.
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