Friday Memes: Murder at King's Crossing by Andrea Penrose

 Happy Friday!

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader. She asks that the first sentence is posted along with the author and title of the book and the reader's initial thoughts on the sentence, the book, or anything else it inspires. 

Carrie at Reading Is My Superpower.org also provides a linky for sharing first lines and connecting with others. This meme asks that the chosen books be PG or marked as Mature if they are not. 

Beginning:

"Damnation!" Hair spiking up in disarray, spectacles sliding down the slope of his beaky nose, the man glanced up from the work papers strewn across his desk and stared at the clock with a look of dawning horror. "What pernicious quirk of the cosmos has made six hours fly by in the space of one?"

Friday 56:

"Murdered!" exclaimed Wayland. "There must be some mistake!" He looked at his friends in mute appeal. "We all know that country coroners are notoriously uneducated and ill-trained."

This week I am spotlighting Murder at King's Crossing by Andrea Penrose. This one has been waiting on my TBR mountain but moved rapidly to the top when I was approved for the next one in this series on NetGalley.

Here's the description from Amazon:

For fans of Miss Scarlet and the Duke and Bridgerton—a masterfully plotted mystery that combines engaging protagonists with rich historical detail and “an unusually rich look at Regency life,” (Publishers Weekly), plus a touch of romance that readers of Amanda Quick and Deanna Raybourn will savor.

Celebration is in the air at Wrexford and Charlotte’s country estate as they host the nuptials of their friends, Christopher Sheffield and Lady Cordelia Mansfield. But on the afternoon of the wedding, the festivities are interrupted when the local authorities arrive with news that a murdered man has been discovered at the bridge over King’s Crossing, his only identification an invitation to the wedding. Lady Cordelia is horrified when the victim is identified as Jasper Milton, her childhood friend and a brilliant engineer who is rumored to have discovered a revolutionary technological innovation in bridge design. That he had the invitation meant for her cousin Oliver, who never showed up for the wedding, stirs a number of unsettling questions.

Both men were involved in the Revolutions-Per-Minute Society, a scientific group dedicated to making radical improvements in the speed and cost of transportation throughout Britain. Is someone plotting to steal Milton’s designs? And why has her cousin disappeared?

Wrexford and Charlotte were looking forward to spending a peaceful interlude in the country, but when Lady Cordelia resolves to solve the mystery, they offer their help, along with that of the Weasels and their unconventional inner circle of friends. The investigation turns tangled and soon all of them are caught up in a treacherous web of greed, ambition, and dangerous secrets. And when the trail takes a shocking turn, Wrexford and Charlotte must decide what risks they are willing to take with their family to bring the villains to justice . . .