Taylor’s creamy prose falters only in one of those mind-numbing wrap-ups that make Conan Doyle a chore.
Ten-year-old Edgar Allan Poe finds criminal doings among arrivistes and aristos in Regency England.
Taylor (The Office of the Dead, 2000, etc.) knits his considerable skills as a crime writer and as a master of historical detail into a smooth, agreeably complex solution of two mysteries in the life of the real-life Poe: the early disappearance of his actor father and Poe’s disappearance in the last days of his own life. Thomas Shield is the narrator and true heart of the story. A shell-shocked Waterloo veteran, Oxford-educated, and poor as a churchmouse, Shield finds employment as teacher at the Rev. Mr. Bransby’s small private prep school north of London. Among his pupils are the American Edgar Allan, placed there by his foster parents, and Charles Frant, only son of high-flying banker Henry Frant and his beautiful wife Sophia. The two lads, whose resemblance to each other is notable, are socially connected, and Shield is very quickly drawn into the complications of their lives with the apparent murder of Henry Frant and the brief appearance of Edgar’s dissolute and faintly menacing father David Poe. Shield is called on to identify Frant’s battered corpse, and his doubts about the identity place the teacher in the role of detective for the rest of the story. Accompanying Charlie back to London as chaperon and tutor, Shield takes a between-stairs place in the household of odious nouveau riche banker Stephen Carswall, the man who had ruined Henry Frant financially before his murder. Also in the household are Carswall’s beautiful illegitimate daughter Flora and Sophia Frant, in need of both money and protection. Profoundly attracted to both women, Shield is repulsed by Carswall, whose naked social ambitions are leading to the purchase of a baronet for the cynical Flora. When the family decamp to Carswall’s Gloucestershire estate for the Christmas holidays, they take Shield with them, so he is present for the eventual discovery of yet another corpse and the complications of Carswall’s ambitions. The amateur detective is fortunate to have the assistance of a team of straight-talking Americans.
Taylor’s creamy prose falters only in one of those mind-numbing wrap-ups that make Conan Doyle a chore.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4013-0102-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
A delightful debut spiced with a tempestuous romance and certain to appeal to fans of genealogical research and history.
A Texas genealogist’s search for the truth of an old murder precipitates a present-day killing.
Austin-based Lucy Lancaster is doing research for Texas legend Gus Halloran, who’s convinced that his great-great grandfather Seth was murdered despite the 1849 newspaper stories that say he was trampled by a horse. The sole witness was photographer Jeb Inscore, and Lucy hits the jackpot when she visits his great-granddaughter Betty-Anne Inscore-Cooper, whose boxes of daguerreotypes include one that depicts Seth lying dead in a bloodstained shirt. Inscore’s journals reveal that someone with the initials C.A. paid to have Seth murdered; the multiple hoof marks on his body were intended to hide a knife wound. The most likely candidates are Cantwell Ayers and Caleb Applewhite, whose descendant is running for the Senate against Halloran’s son. Soon after a tipsy Lucy tells reporters at a news conference how she found the evidence of the old murder, she’s visited by FBI Special Agent Ben Turner, who has a lot of annoying questions about her work for Halloran and her amateur investigation, as boxes of daguerreotypes have been stolen from Betty-Anne. Fortunately, Lucy’s turned over the other daguerreotypes and journals to her friend Winnie Dell, the curator for a history center at the University of Texas at Austin. Unfortunately, Winnie is murdered and the daguerreotype of Seth stolen. Lucy’s officemates, Serena and Josephine, are constantly trying to get their gal pal back in the dating game after a bad breakup. They consider Ben a good bet even though the pair constantly wrangle over Lucy’s sleuthing. In the end, Lucy’s hot-and-cold relationship with Ben helps to turn up more clues about the old murder that’s caused her friend’s death.
A delightful debut spiced with a tempestuous romance and certain to appeal to fans of genealogical research and history.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18903-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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