{"id":41425,"date":"2021-09-14T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=41425"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:57:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:57:40","slug":"death-at-the-crystal-palace-by-jennifer-ashley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/death-at-the-crystal-palace-by-jennifer-ashley\/","title":{"rendered":"Death at the Crystal Palace by Jennifer Ashley"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>British cook and amateur sleuth Kat Holloway returns in the latest mystery by Jennifer Ashley,\u00a0 taking place in and around London during the early 1900s.\u00a0 Death at the Crystal Palace<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is the fifth book in the Below Stairs Mystery<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 series which focuses on the “downstairs” staff headed by cook Holloway and the rest of the staff,\u00a0 whose lives intertwine with the “upstairs” aristocratic class and estate owners.\u00a0 Kat and the rest of the below stairs staff keep the manor house running smoothly.\u00a0 Kat spends her days preparing complex delicacies for the aristocratic family for whom she works.\u00a0 Her position within the household makes for long hours in the kitchen, sometimes cooking for dozens of\u00a0 household members and their numerous guests.\u00a0 With all her obligations, she still finds the time to help solve a mystery or two.<\/p>\n

Death at the Crystal Palace<\/strong><\/em><\/a> opens with Kat accompanying one member of the household, Lady Cynthia, to an academic lecture at the Crystal Palace in London.\u00a0 At the conclusion of the lecture, Lady Covington, the widow of a railway owner, approaches Kat and declares that someone in her household is trying to poison her.\u00a0 She is adamant that she needs Kat’s sleuthing skills to help find the culprit.\u00a0 Kat is immediately suspicious of the claim.\u00a0 Is Lady Covington being targeted by someone in household or is it all in her head?\u00a0 Kat makes arrangements with Lady Covington to make a secretive visit to her household under the guise of recipe sharing with the Covington family cook, in order to find out more about the possible plot.<\/p>\n

After learning more about the Covington family and their possible motivations for wanting to bring harm to the matriarch of the family, Kat finds herself yet again, at the Crystal Palace for an academic event.\u00a0 With all the Covington family in attendance and able to be observed, Kat discovers another member of the family near death as the result of an attempted poisoning .<\/p>\n

While tending to the crisis at hand, Kat’s close confidant, Daniel McAdam, is up to his neck\u00a0 in his own case and recruits Kat to assist him in much larger matters of national security.\u00a0 Toggling between the matter of Lady Covington’s potential poisoning and assisting Daniel with his undercover endeavor, Kat is at risk of having her true identity discovered which could potentially have catastrophic consequences for the future!<\/p>\n

This series keeps getting better and better with each book.\u00a0 Author Jennifer Ashley not only gives the reader a complex and intricate mystery to solve, the series is also a great example of historical fiction, detailing the lives and customs of the British at the turn of the last century.\u00a0 Although this book is able to be read as a stand alone mystery, I highly recommend starting with the first book in the series Death Below Stairs<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British cook and amateur sleuth Kat Holloway returns in the latest mystery by Jennifer Ashley,\u00a0 taking place in and around London during the early 1900s.\u00a0 Death at the Crystal Palace is the fifth book in the Below Stairs Mystery\u00a0 series which focuses on the “downstairs” staff headed by cook Holloway[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,5,8],"tags":[1935,5907,5906,476,1245,413,880,5296],"class_list":["post-41425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-read-a-likes","category-staff-picks","tag-aristocracy","tag-crystal-palace","tag-downstairs-staff","tag-family-drama","tag-historical-mystery","tag-london","tag-poison","tag-railroad-accidents"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-aM9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41425"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41714,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41425\/revisions\/41714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}