The Mitford Scandal

Heavy-handed foreshadowing mars bestseller Fellowes’s third mystery featuring the real-life Mitford family (after 2018’s Bright Young Dead). In 1928, two years after former criminal Louisa Cannon left the employ of the Mitfords, for whom she worked as a nursery maid, Louisa returns to service with the Guinness family. Louisa crosses paths with her now grown former charges, Nancy and Diana Mitford, at a party her employers are hosting in London, which ends tragically with a servant falling to her death in an apparent accident. After Diana marries Bryan Guinness in 1929, Louisa joins her as a ladies’ maid, a job that takes her to Paris, where she runs across her sometime love interest, Det. Sgt. Guy Sullivan, who’s on the trail of another servant, who disappeared after working in the Guinness home the night of the fatal gala. While in Paris, one of Bryan’s friends dies, also apparently accidentally. More deaths follow. Thin characterizations, especially of Diana, who would go on to marry British fascist Oswald Mosley, don’t enhance a lumbering plot. Series fans will be disappointed. Agent: Caroline Michel, Peters Fraser and Dunlop (U.K.). (Jan.)