The Mitford Trial is the fourth instalment of Fellowes Mitford based mysteries and we are going on a cruise! Hooray!
Newlywed Louisa Sullivan is given the tap on the shoulder by the men in grey suits and asked to keep tabs on those fascist sympathising Mitfords. Diana has to make herself scarce while her divorce goes through and the only way she can keep her hands of Mosley and prevent a scandal is to shut herself up on a cruise ship round Italy.
Louisa is soon embroiled in a murder and Guy is handily on board to head up the investigation. Events conspire to put them at odds and Louisa ends up having to choose between her country’s security and her marriage.
There’s a bit of time hopping in this one as we jump back and forth between the events on the ship and the trial of the culprits. I found this rather took the tension out of main plot especially since there is a two year gap between the cruise and the trial. I also felt that character of Iain was a bit light. Louisa, who let’s not forget is a nosey so and so who solves crimes, seems to accept him and everything he says without too much trouble even when it puts her relationship with Guy on the line. The authors note explains that he is based on a real person so I felt he could have been fleshed our a bit more or Louisa could have questioned his motives more thoroughly at the very least considering she was turning her life upside down for him after a couple of short meetings.
The mystery is also based loosely in a real life case and as such there isn’t a clear cut resolution which I didn’t mind, I love a bit of moral conflict, life is messy, areas are grey.
The Mitford's were less prominent as Louisa’s life becomes less tangled with them as she begins to make a life of her own with Guy so I will be interested to see where this series goes after this.

Louisa Sullivan (nee Cannon) is pulled away from her new life to serve the Mitford family again, this time on a European cruise. She leaves behind her puzzled husband, who can’t work out why she would go back into that milieu.
A suspicious death brings them closer together- but Louisa can’t share all she knows.
Set against a backdrop of the rise of fascism in Britain as well as the Continent, bristling with scandal, secrets and spies, fans of this golden age homage series will find much to enjoy.
I was left unsatisfied and suspect I might be more interested in Louisa’s life without the glamour and snobbery of Lord Redesdale’s brood.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

Another exciting mystery in the Mitford series which I’m thinking may be coming to an end but I’m hoping not. Based on a real murder - don’t read the end notes until you’ve finished the book - this time we’re on board a cruise ship, the Princess Alice, in the Mediterranean in the early 1930s. Louisa, now married to Guy, accepts the Mitfords’ offer to accompany them as their ladies’ maid but unbeknowns to them, she has an ulterior motive. When Joseph Fowler is found murdered in his stateroom, the candidates for perpetrator are obvious. But are they too obvious? Running as a parallel story is Diana (Mitford) Guinness’s involvement with Sir Oswald Moseley and Unity Mitford’s obsession with Hitler.

Jessica Fellowes is a careful researcher and has managed to unearth a true crime of passion on which to base this story. When combined with the Mitford sisters’ political obsessions, this makes for an exciting and interesting storyline. It’s a real page turner, at times only just (but successfully) managing to avoid melodrama, and I would love there to be a 5th in this series.

With thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for a review copy. (This review will be published on Goodreads on 22 October 2020.

I truly cannot get enough of this book series.
I love the characters and find the stories to be entertaining and gripping throughout.

Jessica's Mitford sisters series are a great blend of my two favourite types of books; historical fiction and murder mysteries. Before starting this series, I knew nothing of the Mitford family or their history, but after the first book, I was intrigued to learn more so did some research on the family itself and that really deepened my enjoyment of the next 3. Well written and researched they are an easy recommend to readers who love a mixture of Downtown Abby and Midsomer Murders with a touch of menace.

** spoiler alert ** I've really enjoyed this series of books despite not knowing anything about the Mitford sisters.
They are like a warm comforting cuppa on a rainy day...and I thought this one especially as it starts with the wedding of Louisa and Guy.
We then have a good old classic "country house" murder...
But the talk of Germany and Hitler made the book ever so slightly more sinister than I remember the others being.
It felt like the final story ,I hope it's not

Inspired by a real murder full of surprises and secrets, the next book in this series sees newly married Louisa Sullivan, née Cannon, agreeing to accompany three of the Mitford women on a luxury cruise. But shortly before leaving England – and her husband – Louisa is asked to do something so out of character, and so against who she is (but something that gives her a thrill). Will she agree? And how will she react when, on aboard the liner, looking after the women who gave her a new life, there’s a gruesome attack. The story switches between what happened on board and the subsequent court case which makes the story seem all the more realistic. It’s not a story that’s full of hope necessarily, it is set in 1933-1935 when England is gearing up for another war, but it is sensitive to the time. The research that Jessica has done on the Mitford family – a group of people about whom I’ve always been interested – is apparent.