‘A Terribly Nasty Business’ is as much of a romp as its predecessor
Seales returns to the world of ‘A Most Agreeable Murder’ with another charming regency murder mystery
★★★★✩
A Terribly Nasty Business
Julia Seales
Random House
June 24, 2025
Two years after the success of her first novel, A Most Agreeable Murder, Julia Seales has written a sequel titled A Terribly Nasty Business. In her new novel, Seales takes her beloved characters on a new adventure in another delightful satire combining Jane Austen’s romance and Agatha Christie’s detective fiction.
In A Most Agreeable Murder, readers follow Beatrice Steel, a young woman trying to navigate the rules and expectations of Regency-era England while hiding her obsession with true crime. Beatrice would rather solve a murder mystery than embroider, much to the despair of her mother. But when an eligible bachelor unexpectedly drops dead at a ball, Beatrice finally gets an opportunity to fulfill her dream of solving a murder.
Thus begins Beatrice’s first murder investigation, where she comes up against ladies with suspiciously good scone-making abilities, gentlemen who would stoop to crime before doing something so degrading as getting an actual job, and the occasional ghost. Meanwhile, Beatrice must come to terms with who she truly is and figure out a way to reveal her passion for murder investigations without forever being ostracized from society for being a morbid creep.
After the events of Seales’s debut novel, Beatrice and her fellow detective Vivek Drake move to London in A Terribly Nasty Business to open a private investigation agency. Unfortunately, Drake’s former partner, the famous Sir Huxley, has monopolized the business of private investigation in London, leaving Beatrice and Drake to investigate missing pets and misplaced glasses.
Beatrice is struggling to keep their business afloat when she discovers a series of murders amidst the London arts community. Now, she must solve the case before Sir Huxley to save her business. Meanwhile, Beatrice must navigate both her relationship with Drake and her mother’s constant entreaties to quit investigating and finally find a rich husband. Seales continues to keep readers guessing and laughing as Beatrice infiltrates the upper crust of London society to track down the killer.
Just like its predecessor, A Terribly Nasty Business is hilarious. Seales continues to affectionately poke fun at Austen and Regency romance while weaving a mystery filled with unexpected twists and turns that is simultaneously clever and delightfully ridiculous.
A Terribly Nasty Business moves away slightly from regency satire and establishes itself more firmly in the cozy mystery genre. Some strengths of Seales’s previous novel are not as present in the sequel; the plot is occasionally slow and Beatrice’s eccentric and loveable family are notably absent from the sequel.
Beatrice’s harebrained prankster father, marriage-obsessed mother, and sister who could possibly be a werewolf are dearly missed, though there are many new humorous side characters introduced. These include two other women Beatrice meets who are also obsessed with solving mysteries and go to great lengths to help her catch the killer.
Though the sequel lacks some of the strengths of Seales’s previous book, the novel is still strong enough to leave readers eager for more. Seales has left the door open for future developments for detectives Beatrice Steele and Vivek Drake, and hopefully a new installment in the series is on its way.