Lady Virginia Holt washes up after disposing of a body. "Get out," she tells her seven-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, who tries to see what her mother is doing. The next morning Virginia tells Jocelyn that her nanny and only friend, Hannah, left in the middle of the night because "you're a bad girl, a very bad girl."
Thirty years later, Jocelyn's husband has died and left her penniless. She and her daughter, Ruby, must return to the Holt family estate in England to live with the now widowed Lady Holt because they have nowhere else to go. It's an awkward homecoming. Ruby has known life only in California and has trouble fitting in. Jocelyn pointedly missed her father's funeral so she wouldn't have to face her mother, whom she blames for Hannah's leaving. Civility is strained. Then a skeleton with a cracked skull is found on the grounds. The victim was murdered around the time Hannah disappeared, and it's assumed the bones are hers. Then a woman appears claiming she's Hannah--but Lady Holt knows she can't be.
Gilly MacMillan skillfully creates four strong female characters and stirs them into a dangerous murder mystery narrated from each woman's point of view. Although the novel's particularly British sensibilities may draw comparisons to the upstairs vs. downstairs pride and prejudices that made Downton Abbey so popular, The Nanny serves up enough intrigue to warrant its own wing of the mansion. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer