Murder at the Serpentine Bridge: Regency Mystery (4 Stars)

Yesterday, I finished reading Murder at the Serpentine Bridge by Andrea. I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway back in August. This is a Regency murder mystery book. It’s also the sixth book in a series. I haven’t read the previous books in the series, and I think that made a difference in my reading experience.

A Plot Overview

Jeremiah Willis, a brilliant inventor, is found murdered at the Serpentine Bridge. Willis was working on a Top Secret weapon that it turns out wasn’t as top secret as it should have been. Unfortunately, information about Willis’ invention also appears to be missing. Charlotte and Wexford, who are the main characters from the previous books, set out to find out who murdered Willis and to recover the missing invention information.

Read the Previous Books First

I feel very much like this is one of those books where reading the previous books is helpful. There are a lot of characters in this book. It was difficult to keep them all straight. I wish that I’d created a character list. I think reading the previous books would have helped to make this easier to understand. Based on how they talked about the characters, I feel like there were also a lot of characters introduced in this book. If I read other books in this series, I’ll likely start at the beginning of the series. I feel like the story might make more sense if I don’t have to concentrate so much on trying to figure out how specific characters fit into the plot.

Slow-Paced Regency Mystery

I actually found this book to have a really slow pace for a murder mystery. This is particularly true considering the murder happens at the very beginning of the book. If you take out the Author’s Note at the end and the preview of the next book, this book is about 350 words, so it’s on the longer side.

Reader Warnings

This book does have some swearing. While it is some of the milder swear words, the swearing was more common than I anticipated. As for sexual content, there’s really not any beyond couples kissing. Several characters are murdered, but none of the murders are described in graphic detail. This book also discusses racism, although race didn’t play as much a part of the story as might be assumed considering the time period.

My Final Thoughts

If you like Regency novels and murder mysteries, this might be a book that you’ll enjoy. I would definitely recommend starting with the first book in the series, though. I found myself with a lot of questions concerning how certain characters fit into the story.