Finished Off

Title: Finished Off

Author: Rebecca Kent (Doreen Roberts Hight)

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Mystery

Copyright Date: 2009

Print Date: April 2009

ISBN: 9780425228111

Pages: 196

Series: 2nd of the Bellhaven House Mystery series

Book Description (from back cover):

Welcome to Bellehaven Finishing School in the English Cotswolds. It's where the well-to-do send their daughters — and where one headmistress can turn the most incorrigible tomboy into a refined young lady. It's the heart of elegance, the seat of sophistication, the scene of...murder?

The Nearly Departed

After the murder of a teacher at the school, Bellehaven has almost returned to normalcy, with the girls back on the tennis courts and the scullery maids sneaking into town. All's well until Headmistress Meredith Llewellyn — a proper young widow who always thought ghosts a mere fancy of the insane — sees her second spirit...

This little-girl ghost dearly wants to be reunited with her family. Deeply pained, Meredith begins investigating their deaths, but as sinister secrets are revealed, Meredith grows more than a little wary of snooping into what might be another murder. For a true lady never goes anywhere uninvited...

Comments:

This is a cozy mystery set in the early 1900s. Much of it is interesting. Meredith has her mystery about who the little girl whose ghost she is seeing is and what she is trying to communicate. Meanwhile, a couple of maids at the finishing school fumble with attempts to participate in the suffragette movement. Light and interesting.

However, I did feel a bit irritated with Meredith when she spent so much time trying to solve the ghost's mystery that she neglected her job running the school. I also don't really care for any of the male characters (though Reggie might be okay given time).

I will read the 3rd and last book (out as of February) in the series (followed by the wrap-up of the characters lives provided on the author's website).