Snobbery with Violence

Snobbery with Violence is a 2003 historical mystery by Marion Chesney, published by St. Martin's Minotaur as a 226-page book. C. Beaton, at this point producing several well-established mystery series.

The plot begins with a piece of private work. Harry Cartwright exposes a suitor's intentions toward a client's daughter and is then hired by a wealthy marquis to look into a murder at a house party. Because the setting is a country house full of guests, the suspect list is the party list and the investigation is conducted inside the rules of hospitality. The guests all know one another, so the suspect list is simply the list of people at the party.

The difficulty the novel sets up is the host's insistence on discretion, which means the investigator cannot simply examine everyone or report what he finds. That constraint is standard for the cosy mystery and for the historical version of it, and the title states the book's subject directly: violent death handled as a matter of manners, in which the damage to reputations is treated as seriously as the crime.