Mrs. Jeffries Defends Her Own by Emily Brightwell

Mrs. Jeffries Defends Her Own by Emily Brightwell ISBN-13: 9780425248058 Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: May 1, 2012

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description from Back Cover:
When the general office manager of Sutcliffe Manufacturing is murdered, no one is really surprised. Ronald Dearman was anything but a dear man. The tyrannical bully had more than enough enemies to go around. But who hated him enough to walk into his office and put a bullet between his eyes?

For once, Inspector Gerald Witherspoon doesn’t get the case, it’s given to another inspector. Then someone from Mrs. Jeffries’ past—someone she’d hoped to never see again—shows up and begs for her help. Now Mrs. Jeffries must step into the fray and stop a terrible miscarriage of justice...


My Review:
Mrs. Jeffries Defends Her Own is a historical mystery set in England in the late 1800's, though we don't know the exact year. The period details tended to be a bit vague, though there was enough setting and period detail to give the story a historical feel. The characters were engaging and realistic, though not highly complex.

This book was the thirtieth book (I think!) in the series, but you don't need to read the previous books to understand this one. And this book didn't spoil the mysteries of the previous books, so you can read them out of order.

The story was primarily a clue-based mystery where the reader and characters need to discover and then sort through the clues to figure out whodunit. Though I thought it was fairly obvious that one or both of two specific characters were whodunit, Mrs. Jeffries had a valid reason to be a bit delayed in coming to the same conclusion. And then she cleverly set up a trap to determine whodunit without the Inspector being any the wiser that she was behind it. (This was handled believably.)

There was no sex. There was a minor amount of explicit bad language (some of it was British bad words). Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable and well-written mystery.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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