About the Book

Book: A Death Observed (The Belle of Bow Street Regency Mysteries Book 1)

Author: Kate Darroch

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Release date: October, 2024

1812. Belle, an independently wealthy young Quaker woman, living in London with her large birth family, has received an excellent education because her father, now the Astronomer Royal, was previously an Oxford don. But she has no degree: for women are not allowed to receive degrees in 1812 in England. Belle is a patron of the Ragged School and the Paupers Infirmary; she gives her time and skills as well as money. She also helps her father at nights in Greenwich Observatory.

One stormy night she opens the Observatory door onto a dying young nobleman. The Watch are summoned, but the victim has bled out and the storm has washed away all trace of the murder. Belle sees clues; she wants to jump in, but no young middle-class lady would ever be allowed to become part of a murder investigation.

Belle is no ordinary lady. She learned independence and kindness at her mother’s knee, was taught to serve the Light from her earliest days. Seeking to serve, Belle finds a way to sleuth, she finds the murderer.

Can she find love along the way? Will her family forgive the deceptions she is forced to practice? Will they condone her desire to marry a man who has neither wealth nor birth to recommend him, only his good heart? Will her beloved survive the shock of discovering her secrets? And will his pride permit him to ask for the hand of a woman who is socially and financially so far above him?

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About the Author

KATE DARROCH, 2022 Readers’ Favorite Gold Medallist for Humor, lives on the picturesque Devon coast, where she combines her passion for mystery and for life as it’s lived in other countries to create compelling Travel Cozies and moving Recovery Romances.

Kate’s debut novel, Death in Paris, has won many international book awards, including the 2022 Incipere Award for best Christian Fiction. Kate hopes her readers will enjoy Màiri’s sleuthing adventures as much as she enjoys reading Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes, Anty Boisjoly’s antics, and the Mr Quayle Mysteries.

Next, Kate wrote Huntingdon Hart, a witty, prescient, multi-millionaire, tongue-in-cheek meld of Get Smart, James Bond, and Mycroft Holmes. Hunt’s in love with a much older woman.

Kate’s most recent series is Sweets By the Sea, a Recovery & Redemption Saga of Second Chances for Lasting Love that her readers say is even sweeter than Màiri’s adventures.

More from Kate

Belle Comes Out of the Shadows

I am so thrilled that the first book in the Belle of Bow Street series, A Death Observed, a historical murder mystery set in 1812, is at last ready for launch.

Research began for this series in June 2021, so this is one time where a self-published novel has taken as long to reach readers as would have happened as a matter of course if it had been traditionally published. The research process was fascinating. The novel is set in Marylebone in London in the winter of 1812. Marylebone High Street is right in the heart of Central London, just off Oxford Street. At one time I lived in Marylebone High Street and worked in an office block in Saville Row, which is just off Regent Street, a brisk 15 minute walk from Marylebone High Street. So I know the area well.

But Marylebone was a very different place in 1812, when it was a village on the ‘outskirts’ of Londontown, respectable, but certainly not salubrious. It was home mainly to merchants and tradesmen who lived above their shops and places of business. Belle’s family are not merchants; they are scholars, and very wealthy by our standards, although not fabulously wealthy like the noble classes of the period. Belle inherits a house in Marylebone High Street from her godmother and her whole family chooses to live in that house, even though Belle’s father (a one-time Oxford don who is now the Astronomer Royal) spends three nights a week at Greenwich Observatory, a long horse-ride from their home, a dangerous journey by night.

Being Quakers, Belle and her family believe in hard work; and in following the Light. They feel strongly about bettering the lot of the poor. The poor – that is the working classes, the class into which I was born – had a dreadful time if they lived in London in the 19^th century, as those of you who have read Charles Dickens have cause to suspect. That’s why Belle and her family chose to live in Marylebone, where there is a Ragged School and an Infirmary.

Researching those establishments – which no longer exist – and the whole history of Marylebone during the period was much easier for me than it might have been, because I am a member of the Marylebone Society, a local community effort to preserve the history of this “village” within London. The Society publishes several books about Marylebone during the period when this novel is set, and the member meetings are a wonderful treasure trove of members old and young who are steeped in Marylebone’s history, often passed down from mother to child across generations, creating the closest thing to eye-witness accounts possible in today’s world. I am most grateful to the Marylebone Society and our membership for many colourful accounts of life in Marylebone in 1812.

By November 2021, I’d completed all the research. I was looking forward to telling the story enormously, because everything about the Quakers during that period in history – and the tempestuous history of Marylebone, in 1812 barely respectable, today so glamorous – and Belle’s independence and lively family relationships, so untypical of the period and yet so authentic in context, was and is fascinating to me.

But for nearly two years my writing time (a commodity in short supply) was devoted to the various Màiri Maguire Cozy Mysteries, and so it is only now that Belle is ready to take her place in the fictional world of early 19^th century crime and the birth of modern policing.

Don’t think that because the background and setting is authentic A Death Observed is a dull book! Marylebone in 1812 was a hotbed of fascinating and unusual crimes and of approaches to criminology which make modern crime scenes seem tame by comparison. Belle’s unusual take on the world in which she lives is not a crime-solving scenario that you will see in many other historical mysteries. In fact, so far as I know, it is unique.

To announce this book’s launch, a Celebration Book Tour is about to begin. I thank the team at Celebration Lit a million times for their prayers and for introducing Belle to readers whom I hope will read the Belle of Bow Street Mysteries and enjoy them.