I wasn't quite finished with Mrs. Ashton, Braddie, and Maisie after The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder, so I was more than ready to follow them into another Victorian mystery. This time we're in 1882, spiritualism is still providing Mrs. Ashton with a way to earn a living, and there are plenty of secrets hiding beneath respectable Victorian appearances. Considering what happened the last time these women started asking questions, I probably should have expected trouble to find them again.
The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror by Stephen Cox
Series: The Crooked Medium #2

True terror is a murderer you can’t stop.

London 1882. A carpenter is killed by a train – an eerie, brutal crime. Flamboyant spiritualist medium Mrs Ashton and her sapphic partner Braddie seek justice for the widow.

A charismatic rival medium takes London by storm. Dock-lass Maisie sees her frightening prophesy of vengeance. A noble family is devastated, but worse is to come.

Outgunned and bewildered, the three confront a deadly conspiracy. They risk losing everything.

A reckoning from beyond the grave.

Tropes:🕯️ Spooky Victorian Mystery 🌈 Sapphic Couple 🔮 Crooked Medium & Con Artists 🔎 Amateur Sleuths ✨ Psychic Abilities 🏛️ Historical Mystery 🤎 Found Family 🗝️ Conspiracy & Secrets 👻 Supernatural Elements

Triggers:💀 Murder & Violent Death 🚂 Fatal Train Incident 📜 Discussion of Historic Crimes ⚠️ Threats & Danger ⛪ Inappropriate Behavior from a Clergyman Toward Young Women

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In this series: The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder
Other books from this Author The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder

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.

After loving my introduction to these characters in The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder, I was curious whether the second book could pull me back into their strange little corner of Victorian Britain. The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror did exactly that, and I enjoyed being back with Mrs. Ashton, Braddie, and Maisie just as much as I did the first time.

One of my favorite things about Mrs. Ashton continues to be the contradiction at the center of her career. She’s a crooked medium because the abilities she sells to her clients aren’t quite the abilities she actually possesses. She claims to have the Sight and uses plenty of tricks to convince people she can communicate with the dead, yet she genuinely has a supernatural gift. She’s telepathic.

Apparently having an actual psychic ability isn’t useful enough when you’re trying to pay the bills in Victorian London. Her relationship with Braddie also gets more room to breathe in this book, and I loved the smaller details Cox gives us about their life together. These two women have built a marriage for themselves during a time when the world around them refuses to recognize it.

I especially loved learning about the argument over where they would exchange their vows. Mrs. Ashton wanted a church, even if it had to be a closed one. Braddie wanted something outdoors. Their compromise was a ruined abbey open to the sky, with a history centered around women. That little piece of their past told me more about their relationship than a big romantic speech ever could.

They’re partners in the investigations too. Making enough money to live matters to both of them, and they’re certainly willing to bend a few rules along the way, but neither has lost her compassion. I noticed that especially in the way they respond to other women. They may be con artists, but that doesn’t mean they’ll simply walk away when someone is frightened, vulnerable, or in danger.

The mystery kept me guessing again. I had suspicions, changed my mind, found new people to question, and still didn’t have everything neatly worked out before Cox was ready to show his hand. The people connected to the victim also felt like actual people dealing with the consequences of a death rather than names dropped onto the page because a murder mystery needs suspects.

I was happy to see Maisie again too. She was one of my favorite characters in the first book, and I continue to love having her mixed up in these investigations. She’s clever, resourceful, and more than capable of finding her way into places where she probably shouldn’t be.

The Victorian setting is another reason this series works so well for me. Cox doesn’t simply tell us it’s 1882 and throw a horse-drawn carriage onto the street. We get cultural references to Gilbert and Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte, along with words and expressions I occasionally had to figure out from context. I ran across “hinny” this time, which was new to me.

Those details are especially fun for me as an American reader. I want historical fiction to give me things I don’t already know. I want the language, entertainment, social expectations, and ordinary bits of life that remind me these characters aren’t living in the twenty-first century with different clothes.

There’s also more exploration of the supernatural and of the way these characters understand good, evil, guilt, repentance, and faith. Christianity exists within that Victorian world alongside séances, spiritualism, psychic abilities, and people trying to decide exactly what they believe. I liked that these questions became part of what the characters were dealing with rather than simply being added as decoration around the mystery.

Stephen Cox’s writing still has a distinctive rhythm that feels appropriate for the period. It took me a little time to adjust to that style in the first book, particularly some of the dialogue, but I slipped back into it much faster this time. By now, Braddie’s speech sounds like Braddie to me.

I also appreciate that the series hasn’t suddenly polished Mrs. Ashton and Braddie into perfectly respectable Victorian detectives. They’re still willing to con people. Mrs. Ashton is still making money from abilities she doesn’t actually possess while hiding the one she does. They need money, they have their own complicated histories, and they aren’t pretending otherwise.

Give me complicated women solving murders in Victorian Britain while running a questionable spiritualist business, and apparently I’ll keep following them around.