I’m always content to see another Below Stairs Victorian mystery from Ashley: the main character, master-cook Kat Holloway, and her band of merry assistant cooks and butler, Mr. Davis, along with friends in high and low places, and protector and love-interest, police-agent Daniel McAdam, are a wonderful group to spend reading time with.

Speculations In Sin sees Kat and company solving a murder that hits too close to home not to have their emotions in turmoil. Grace, Kat’s daughter from a former abusive marriage, is now happily, comfortably, and safely living with her best friend Joanna and husband Sam Millburn and their happy brood. Sam makes a modest living as a bank clerk…but not all is well in the Millburns’ and Kat’s frugal paradise. Daalman’s Bank is seeing funds siphoned, a murder in one of their storerooms, and Sam arrested on both counts, an innocent man, Grace’s and Kat’s rock, as well as his family’s. With Ashley’s well-researched awareness of the precariousness of modest people’s lives in 1883 Victorian London, this spells disaster.

How long, as Sam lies at Newgate awaiting trial, before Joanna and her children are destitute and homeless? And what will Kat do about Grace? Where can Grace be safe and happy while Kat works her way out of the kitchen and into a little café of her own? Moreover, Sam is an innocent, good man, but not of the higher social echelons. He can easily be tried and found guilty, too poor for a barrister to plead his case and equally too poor for an investigation to prove his innocence. Kat, Daniel, and friends high and low work to discover the actual culprit behind the embezzling and Mr. Stockley’s murderer. Mr Stockley was found bludgeoned in one of Daalman’s storerooms and whose whereabouts are connected, by coincidence, that murderous morning to Sam, Sam, who wanted to share suspicious financial findings with Stockley and had been suggesting as much for weeks. Conveniently, one honest man is murdered and another is jailed on suspicion of his murder…whoever done the deeds now safe from suspicion and prosecution? Not with Kat and Daniel, Lady Cynthia and absent-minded mathematical genius Elgin Thanos and their friends on the case.

Ashley’s mystery is thin: I guessed the who and why early on in the narrative. Still, I don’t read for whodunnit, but for character, mood, and setting. In Victorian England, class divisions and life’s fragility for the poor, the dubious security of domestic service, were part and parcel of the city’s ethos. Ashley’s awareness of this context is one of her series’ strengths. Certainly, heroine Kat is constantly reminded of this and Sam and Joanna’s helplessness easily bring it home in this seventh volume. But I also like how a domestic servant and her band of friends can bring justice to this world: can free an innocent man. I especially found the inclusion of good-hearted people from those upper echelons, like Lady Cynthia, Miss Townsend, et al., a nicely nuanced addition to the sleuthing working-class characters, though Ashley doesn’t stray far from class-based realities, ever-present in working-class characters’ fears of losing their employment, the only protection between themselves and the street.

Aside from the story of Sam’s arrest and struggle to free him, Ashley advances certain enjoyable narrative threads (at least to those who’ve followed the series from the start). Kat’s love-interest, Daniel, is a mystery within a mystery: ever-charming, protective, affectionate, and likeable, we learn more about his past. Ashley leaves questions in this wake, tantalizing us towards the next volume, but not in a bait-y way, just dropping nuggets along. Even more welcome is a furthering of Daniel and Kat’s relationship, with Kat finally relenting on her mistrust, given her scoundrel “husband”, whose only redeeming quality was to have fathered Grace, it’s understandable, but I was glad to see Kat giving way to her feelings for Daniel, who is heart-on-sleeve from book one. All in all, an excellent addition to the series, emotionally satisfying and leaving things open to further emotional developments in our characters’ lives. With Miss Austen, we agree, Speculations In Sin offers “real comfort,” Emma.

Jennifer Ashley’s Speculations In Sin is published by Berkley (Prime Crime) and was released on March 5th of this year. I received an e-galley from Berkley, via Netgalley, which didn’t impeded the free and AI-free expression of my opinion.