Victorian London already gives a mystery plenty to work with. Add séances held in dim church halls, scandal sheets, wealthy clients desperate to speak with the dead, and a medium whose relationship with the truth is questionable at best, and things get much more interesting. The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder was my first book from Stephen Cox, and I went into it wondering about the same thing everyone else seems to wonder about Mrs Ashton. Can she actually speak to the dead, or is she simply very good at making people believe she can?
The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder by Stephen Cox
Series: The Crooked Medium #1
Genres: Spooky Victorian Mystery

London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?

Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.

Believing that Mrs Ashton is genuine, grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother's untimely death. But Lady Violet's powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?

Uncovering this MP's wicked crimes will put all three women in terrible danger...

To solve a shocking murder, look both sides of the grave.

Tropes:🔮 Victorian Spiritualism 🔎 Amateur Detectives 🕯️ Séances 🖤 Historical Mystery 👻 Is She Really a Fraud? 🔪 Murder & Family Secrets

Triggers:Murder is witnessed and neither overplayed nor underplayed. Speculation around other historic deaths.

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I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I had been craving a spooky Victorian mystery when I picked up The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder, and apparently this was exactly the book I needed. Set in London in 1881, it gave me séances, spiritualism, suspicious deaths, wealthy families with secrets, and a medium I spent half the book trying to decide whether I trusted.

Honoria Ashton makes her living communicating with the dead. Well, that’s what her clients believe they’re paying for. Her séances involve enough tricks and careful planning that calling her completely legitimate would be generous. She also has a reputation in the scandal sheets for being a fake medium and avoiding her debts, so money isn’t exactly plentiful when we meet her.

Then Lady Violet Barrington-Stewart arrives.

Violet is grieving her mother and wants Honoria to help her make contact. Her husband, Sir Charles, is firmly against spiritualism and doesn’t want his wife anywhere near Honoria. At first, he seems like an overbearing bully who wants to control what Violet does. The more Honoria begins looking into him, though, the more questions she finds. There are suspicious deaths in his family, and suddenly figuring out what Sir Charles is capable of becomes much more important.

One of my favorite parts of the entire book was never being completely certain about Honoria herself. I would decide she was absolutely a fraud, read another chapter, and start questioning that decision. Then something else would happen and I’d change my mind again. Cox kept that question going without making it feel like he was deliberately dangling an answer in front of me.

I also loved Maisie. She’s fourteen, incredibly smart, and knows how to survive on the streets of Victorian London. Give her a reason to investigate something and she is ready to become a proper young lady, a manservant, or whoever else she needs to be to get information. She considers herself an amateur detective, although she’s certainly interested in getting paid for her work. I could have happily followed Maisie around London for another hundred pages.

Braddie took me a little longer to settle into, mostly because of the way her dialogue is written. I had to slow down at first and get used to her speech, but once I found the rhythm of it, I didn’t have nearly as much trouble. The three women together make a wonderfully odd little team. None of them fit neatly into the role Victorian society would probably prefer for them, which made watching them investigate Sir Charles even more fun.

Stephen Cox also does something I really enjoy in historical fiction. He gives you enough detail about the period to make Victorian London feel present without stopping every few pages for a history lesson. Spiritualism is especially interesting here because séances and communicating with the dead aren’t simply spooky decorations added to the mystery. They’re part of the world these characters live in and part of how Honoria earns her money. I even picked up a few historical tidbits along the way.

The writing itself has a distinctive style that took me a little time to settle into, but it suits the setting. Once I adjusted to it, I felt like I was reading something that belonged in this slightly theatrical, strange corner of Victorian London rather than a modern mystery wearing a corset.

There were plenty of twists, and I changed my mind about several people along the way. My only small complaint is that the book felt a little long in places. There were a few points where I was ready for things to move along, but then Maisie would be investigating something she probably shouldn’t, Honoria would make me question whether she had actual abilities again, or another piece of Sir Charles’s history would surface and pull me right back in.

For a first Stephen Cox book, this was quite an introduction. Now I just need someone to sit down with me over coffee and decide once and for all whether Honoria Ashton is actually a medium, because I still have thoughts.