#TheMurderatWorldsEnd #NetGalley
This book will surely be enjoyed by those who like “locked room” mysteries. The reason for the lock is interesting-it is that the Viscount of this residence wants to seal it off for safety reasons linked to his fears around Halley’s Comet. The comet was a huge event at the time and perhaps not fully understood, especially by the viscount.
Of course, a murder takes place. Two less than traditional amateur detectives are on the case. It is entertaining to watch them solve it.
Happily, it seems that this book is the first in a series. I look forward to what comes next.
Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for this title. All thoughts are my own.
Pub date: 06 January 2026
Post first published on 30 January 2026
From Kirkus Reviews:
The odd-couple intergenerational sleuthing duo is a welcome new arrival on the historical-mystery scene, with Stephen’s squeamishness about Miss Decima’s filterless fuming a mainstay of the book’s unremitting humor (Stephen: “I’d never heard language like it…and I’d just spent the last month sharing a bunk with a man called Filthy Mick”). A paragon of the locked-room historical mystery.
Description:
Knives Out meets Downton Abbey! Secrets, murder, and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo—an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian—hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world, in this locked-room mystery by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ross Montgomery.
Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley’s Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom—every window, chimney, and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within… By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.
All eyes turn to Stephen Pike, Tithe Hall’s newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn’t commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, eighty-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she’s been waiting for.
Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges, and rising terror to unmask the killer before it’s too late…
From the Publisher:
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 
It indeed was entertaining to watch although I felt that Stephen was more sleuth skilled than Miss Decima. She felt to be just pompous but slower in the uptake with respect to correlating clues
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I can see your point.
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