Michelle Griep. Twelve Days at Bleakly Manor. Shiloh Run P, 2017.

Two books this Christmas season about adventures during the twelve days of Christmas! A curious coincidence. Twelve Days at Bleakly Manor covers the twelve days of Christmas in an English manor house in 1850-1851. We are told this is first in a series called Once Upon a Dickens Christmas, so we should think of Charles Dickens. We do, but in an unexpected way.

Clara Chapman is bitter. Her fiancé left her at the altar and has disappeared. Somehow, he also dispossessed her brother and her of their family shipping business. Currently, she is caring for an invalid aunt whom she loves. But when her aunt dies, she will have no place to go and nothing to show.

Clara receives a mysterious invitation to an estate in the country. The invitation says that if she can spend the twelve days of Christmas at Bleakly Manor and outstay the other invitees, she will receive five hundred pounds at the end of the retreat. That would be enough likely to restore the family business and name and to insure that she will not have to join her former maid as a laborer in a factory. She is skeptical of the offer, but her aunt encourages her to go.

Twelve Days at Bleakly Manor echoes Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None). It turns out that an eclectic group of people have all been invited to the manor for the holidays. Each has received a promise that if she or she sticks it out for the twelve days, they will receive something that is important to them. For two or three like Clara, it is money. For others it is a promise of another kind such as a promotion or an answer to a burning question.

As in the Christie mystery, the owner of the estate and most of the help are gone, and no one knows who the owner is. Similarly, they all seem to get on one another’s nerves. No one seems to be enjoying the stay, but no one wants to leave—at least not right away. Before the twelfth day, though, most will leave for one reason or another.

There is great mystery and much conflict here, but unlike Ten Little Indians no one is murdered. That does not mean that there is no foul play. The brace on a blade of an ice skate has been filed so thin that the blade suddenly collapses and a skater breaks a leg. Clara slips on a staircase and discovers that a brass rod holding the carpet to the step has been removed.

Most of the guests are strangers to each other. There is one exception. One of the invitees turns out to be Benjamin Lane, Clara’s ex-fiancé, someone she does not care to see ever again. Not only did he leave her in the lurch, but her brother told her how he stole and ruined the family business.

Ben tells a different story. He says that on his way to the wedding, he was arrested for stealing her family’s interest in the shipping company. He was tried in secret without being able to examine any witnesses—something very unusual in English law—and then sentenced to exile. His deportation to the Australian penal colony will take place in a couple of weeks. His invitation to the Bleakly Christmas party promised exoneration and emancipation if he could endure the twelve days there.

There is a varied cast of characters, but the story focuses on Clara and Ben. Ben is trying to convince Clara that he was framed and that his story is true. Clara still finds him appealing, but can she trust him? In other words, unlike the Christie mystery, there is an element of romance. That is not surprising since Michelle Griep has written a few historical romances.

Why is this a “Dickens” mystery, other than the time and place? While the title suggests Bleak House, and there may be a connection with the convoluted legal shenanigans in that novel, this novel seems to rest more on Great Expectations. One of the guests is named Pocket, like the tutor’s family in Great Expectations. Herbert Pocket is engaged to a woman named Clara, but her father thinks Herbert is too poor for her, the same way Clara Chapman’s father saw Ben. There is some swindling by half-siblings, someone nearly dispatched by an ax-head, deportation to Australia lurking in the background, and a promise of change or redemption—some great expectations, if you will.

In other words, this story inspired Great Expectations. And, yes, if this story had actually happened, I have the relationship correct. Twelve Days at Bleakly Manor inspired Great Expectations, not the other way around.