Lady Emily and Colin Hargreaves travel by the Oriental Express to Istanbul, they attend an opera in the Sultans court and afterwards one of his concubines is found dead. She's the long-lost daughter of one of the British Diplomats and this sets off a cascade that Emily and Colin have to investigate. Entertaining with great characters.

At a country house party, invited by her friend Ivy, Lady Emily Ashton expects that she will be irritated but she doesn't expect that her one of her irritations would end up dead. Ivy's husband is arrested for the murder and Emily feels that she needs to defend the innocent and prove who did it. It's a twisty and turny story with a visit to Vienna via the Orient express.

Emily and Colin just need to marry soon.

Mr Charles Berry is being feted in London as the pretender to the French Throne, a direct descendent of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. At the same time heirlooms of the ill-fated queen are going missing in houses around town, a cat burglar is at large and they have forged a connection with Lady Emily Ashton, who is also been plagued by malicious gossip.  In order to ease her way away from the gossip she has to investigate who is behind it, but it's all very complicated.

I enjoyed it, I like Lady Emily and how she approaches life. The complicated cat burglar was fun and how he played with her was interesting, if a chunk stalkery, but I love how Colin regards Emily as competent and smart and capable, feh and grrr to gossip mongers!

When Emily accepts Philip's proposal she does so without any real love on her part, he was the least offensive of the possible candidates and it's more to escape her mother than for love. A few months later he's dead on Safari and she's a widow who now has more freedom than she ever had before. While her mother wants to see her remarried she is using her mourning period to find out more about her husband and she's finding interests that they could have had in common, but she will never really know. Strangely she finds that there are secrets and lies and people who don't want certain truths to come out.

It was an interesting mystery with a lot of introspection on whether or not you really know people you are close to. I enjoyed the read and want more from these people. I really liked Emily and found her growth to be very enlightening.

Could be Darkest London (already used); murder most foul; amateur sleuth (also already used); terrifying women (already used); not quite ghost, though in certain ways she is haunted by her dead husband or the free space for the game, I'm going to have to think about this.

Going to use it for Murder most foul.