Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My favorite escapist reading is historical mystery. Particularly historical mystery set in the UK in the first half of the 20th century, and particularly if it's set among the upstairs downstairs world of the landed gentry and grand manor estates. So this would appear tailor-made for me. But alas alack. Aside from the mystery being paper thin and fairly obvious - which I honestly don't mind so much, I'm here for the milieu not the murder - what really brings this story down is the lack of attention to detail. I was never sure exactly when this story was supposed to be set, and I'm afraid neither did the author. I thought sometime in the 20s but at other times I thought before WW1. At still other times, I was just totally baffled. The narrator talks of how there were hardly any horse and carriages in town anymore, which would suggest before the war but the fairly young characters never seem to make mention of having been involved in any war. She refers to a table and a sofa as "Edwardian" which suggests some time later. They talk of calling the police, so I assume a telephone exists, but then she can only communicate with her own home by way of notes passed along by servants. And then there are the ceaseless Americanisms that slip into the narrative. The manner of talking seems totally out of place but also I got the impression the author was sometimes thinking of a Southern plantation or something akin as her basis for "aristocrats." Of a stone cottage on the estate - which would likely be at least a century old or more - she talks of a "screen door" slamming. At dinner a character "slathered butter on a biscuit." She talks of her maid baking "cookies;" she hopes someone will "run interference" (a football derived term that didn't come into parlance until mid century) and so on. These are just the ones I remember offhand. When people talk of self published works needing an editor, they are usually referring to typos, misspellings and bad grammar. None of that exists here, but it is in definite need of an editor who would have kept the historical accuracy on point - among other things (does the cat have to meow in the dialogue quite so often?). The bones are there and it had potential but as it stands now it reads like somebody who just watched a lot of Downton Abbey and decided to wing it. If you want to sell us historical fiction, just a little research wouldn't go amiss.