Books › Footsteps in the Dark
Footsteps in the Dark
432 pages
A delightfully witty, vintage romp through a creaky manor where the bumps in the night are met with stiff upper lips and sparkling banter.
What it feels like
Reading this vintage mystery feels like stepping into a delightfully chaotic 1930s parlor game. The atmosphere is less genuinely terrifying and more playfully spooky, wrapping the reader in the cozy charm of a rambling, drafty English manor complete with secret passages and groaning cellars. Driven by crisp, rapid-fire dialogue and the affectionate, teasing camaraderie of siblings, the narrative moves at a brisk, entertaining clip. It perfectly balances the mild suspense of a murder investigation with the wry, lighthearted wit characteristic of the era's best drawing-room comedies. It is an absolute treat for fans of Golden Age detective fiction who prefer their haunted houses to be filled with flesh-and-blood villains, amateur sleuths, and an abundance of sparkling British banter.
- Mood
- cozy
- vintage
- mildly spooky
- cheerful
- Tone
- wry
- playful
- witty
- lighthearted
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- amateur sleuthing · sibling camaraderie · rationality vs superstition · hidden secrets
- The writing
- Crisp and heavily reliant on sparkling, rapid-fire dialogue that captures the essence of 1930s British upper-class wit.
- The arc
- Begins with cheerful, skeptical curiosity and builds into a delightfully chaotic, thrilling scramble for the truth.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love Golden Age mysteries where the banter is just as important as the body count, and the ghosts are usually flesh and blood.
Content notes
- murder
- mild peril
About the book
BED, BREAKFAST AND MURDER
The ramshackle old house, with its rambling charm is beloved of Peter, Margaret and Celia, who have inherited it from their uncle. But local wisdom says The Priory is haunted. It wasn't the lack of modern conveniences that made a summer spent at the ancient priory mansion such an unsettling experience. It was the ghost... or whatever was groaning in the cellars and roaming the countryside around Framley Village after dark.
Then a murder is committed. But traditionally ghosts don't commit murder. And in this case, the things which go bump in the night are flesh and blood... and deadly. Does the key to the crime lie in the realm of the supernatural? Or is the explanation much more down to earth?
Description from Open Library.
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