{"id":2442,"date":"2021-09-30T19:55:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T19:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2442"},"modified":"2023-03-05T19:55:56","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T19:55:56","slug":"the-mitford-vanishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2442","title":{"rendered":"The Mitford Vanishing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Mitford sisters, six eccentric socialites and political renegades in the interwar years in England, encountered a frightful number of murders in their day, at least as told in Fellowes\u2019s glamorous historical series, now in its fifth installment. This time, Decca, second-youngest daughter of patriarchal Lord Redesdale and his long-suffering wife, Sydney Bowles, is missing. The family suspects that the 18-year-old has run off with her second cousin, Churchill\u2019s nephew Esmond Romilly, to marry him and fight on the side of the anti-facists in the Spanish Civil War (which Decca and Esmond did in real life). Enter the Mitfords\u2019 former maid Louisa and her husband, Guy, proprietors of the Cannon &#038; Sullivan detective agency. Hired to look for Decca, Louisa nervously embraces the fledgling rights of women in 1937, using her maiden name for work and leaving the couple\u2019s baby with sitters. Indeed, she\u2019s far more advanced than the Mitford \u201cgirls,\u201d whose blithely colonial ways color their every move. <strong>Fellowes\u2019s at times very sad, often funny story stands out for its unusual, Spanish Civil War backdrop; it also offers pleasingly scathing treatment of Nazi sympathizers, exciting chases from England to Spain and back (repeatedly!), and an extraordinarily tense closing scene.<\/strong> While this works as a standalone, go back to the earlier books for a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mitford sisters, six eccentric socialites and political renegades in the interwar years in England, encountered a frightful number of murders in their day, at least as told in Fellowes\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[54,55,56],"class_list":["post-2442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-historical","tag-mystery-detective","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mitford-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Mitford-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}