Janet Gleeson

This was a pretty meh historical fiction mystery. Agnes is a young cook for a middlingly wealthy family and she gets recruited by the master of the house to assist with finding a large silver wine cooler that's been stolen from their shop. They explain why she was picked, but I still found it rather unlikely they'd recruit their chef to help solve a crime, even if they wanted it done without the help of the local police. There were also some murders that happened, so Agnes takes it upon herself to solve those, as the family she works for could care less about the loss of a few servants.

Nothing really grabbed me, though. Agnes was likable enough - your standard, headstrong, independent, forward-thinking woman who struggles between wanting to do what's right and wanting to keep her job because she has a child to support. There's the dichotomy between the upper and lower classes and of course, the guessing game of who-dun-it. It was well-written but not stand-out.… (mehr)