The Mitford Murders

The members of the real-life Mitford family figure prominently in British author Fellowes’s appealing fiction debut (after The World of Downton Abbey, about the hit TV show created by her uncle, Julian Fellowes), which explores the tensions between upstairs and downstairs in an upper-class household. On Christmas Eve, 1919, impoverished Louisa Cannon, who has just come close to picking a man’s pocket on a London street, runs into a friend she hasn’t seen in years, who’s accompanied by the eldest of the six Mitford sisters, Nancy. This chance encounter leads Louisa to a position as a nursemaid at Asthall Manor, the Mitfords’ estate in Oxfordshire. Meanwhile, real-life Florence Nightingale Shore (Florence Nightingale’s god-daughter), who served as a nurse during WWI, is fatally bludgeoned on a train between London and Brighton. Guy Sullivan, a railway policeman eager to earn his family’s respect in spite of the humble nature of his duties, gets involved in the search for Florence’s killer, as does Louisa after she learns that the dead woman had a connection to her new employers. The fairly clued solution makes for a satisfying ending. Agent: Caroline Michel, Peters Fraser and Dunlop (U.K.). (Jan.)