Finished Off

Meredith Llewellyn certainly has her hands full as headmistress of Bellehaven House, a finishing school. She not only has to deal with rebellious students who would rather be tomboys than young ladies, but teachers who are also rebellious, and trying to train a new secretary to keep his hands on his work and not the students. But as busy as she is, when the ghost of a young child appears to her and seems to want her help, Meredith can't turn her away. As Meredith tries to find out what happened to the child she starts to realize that the girl's parent's deaths may not have been an accident as first suspected. Meredith wants to bring the killer to justice and reunite the child with her parents - but will it cost her her own life in the process? "Finished Off" is written by Rebecca Kent, A/K/A Kate Kingsbury, and fans of Kingsbury's Pennyfoot Hotel and Manor House cozy mystery series will enjoy this new cozy mystery series. In fact, this book reminds me a lot of the Pennyfoot Hotel series - it has a strong heroine (Meredith) who has two close friends (Felicity Cross and Esmeralda Pickard); two feisty maids (Olivia and Grace); a stern but loving cook (Mrs. Wilkins); and a possible but seemingly unattainable love interest (Stuart Hamilton). Just like in the Kingsbury books, there is a strong feminist overtone throughout this book as Olivia and Grace join the suffragettes and Felicity, even though she teaches in a finishing school, uses every opportunity she can to preach about women's rights. Meredith, while more subtle, is also a feminist. All in all, Kent does an excellent job of capturing the time period, politics, and language of the time period the novel is set in. Enjoyable as it is, "Finished Off" is a very light cozy mystery. The paranormal aspects are a nice change for Kent, but readers never get a chance to know or care about the victims before their deaths. No real suspects appear until halfway through the book and there aren't enough suspects for readers to try and guess who the killer is (which is part of the fun of reading a cozy). The book relies a bit too much on strangers immediately trusting Meredith and giving her the information she needs. There are some nice secondary mysteries involving teacher Sylvia Montrose and Secretary Roger Platt that will no doubt be addressed in future books in the series. Platt adds much of the humor that is laced throughout the book. I'm not quite buying the Meredith - Stuart romance and love the addition of Inspector Dawson as another possible love interest for Meredith. While "Finished Off" is a light cozy mystery, any book by Kingsbury/Kent is a treasure and I recommend "Finished Off' to not only Kingsbury fans, but fans of cozy mysteries in general.