I love the Lady Hardcastle Mysteries and once again I was not disappointed. An Assassination On The Agenda is the eleventh book in the series and released earlier this year.

Description:

July 1912. Lady Hardcastle and her tenacious lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, are enjoying a convivial gathering at the home of their dear friends, the Farley-Strouds. The only fly in the idyllic ointment seems to be the lack of musical entertainment for the forthcoming summer party—until, that is, Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry calls with news of a murder.

Harry dispatches them to Bristol on behalf of the Secret Service Bureau, with instructions to prevent the local police from uncovering too much about the victim. It seems an intriguing mystery—all the more so when they find a connection between the killer and an impending visit from an Austrian trade delegation, set to feature a very important guest…

Summoned to London to help with some very important security arrangements, the intrepid duo will have to navigate sceptical bureaucrats, Cockney gangsters and shadowy men in distinctive hats in their attempts to foil an explosive—and internationally significant—threat.

My thoughts:

Once again, the pairing of Lad Hardcastle and her partner in solving crime, her maid Florence “Flo” Armstrong was the breeding ground for early 1900s humor and entertainment.

In this installment we see the two women, already known to be spies and operatives for the British government in the past sent on yet another mission. This time they are summoned from their country home to Bristol and their goal is to find out about a group of men who may be trying to commit an assassination that will start a war.

We see Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry and sister-in-law Lavinia (nicknamed Jake) again in this book and as usual I love the bantering between the siblings, which fits in nicely with the bantering between employee and employer, though Lady Hardcastle always treats Flo as her equal.

I read this one on my Kindle but when I had to do dishes or drive somewhere I listened to it on Audible with amazing narration by Elizabeth Knowelden, who is the narrator for most, if not all the other Lady Hardcastle books on Audible.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book but was not asked to give anything other than my honest opinion. Let’s be honest, I was going to read this book even if a complimentary copy had not been provided to me.