A SINISTER REVENGE

Partners in work, crime, and love have a falling out that can be fixed only by another wild adventure.

Lepidopterist Veronica Speedwell’s lover, Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, has left her over a disagreement concerning the husband she had thought dead. When Veronica and Viscount Tiberius Templeton-Vane, Stoker's brother, track the natural historian down in Bavaria, Tiberius has an announcement to make: "I am rather concerned I am about to be murdered." Several of his former friends have recently died, and the obituaries he’s received in the mail have been accompanied by a threat that he will be next along with a stark warning: "VENGEANCE FOR LORENZO." All the men were members of the Seven Sinners, a group of bons vivants Tiberius joined during his days at Cambridge. During that time, they paid a visit to Cherboys, the Templeton-Vane estate in Devon, whose sea cliffs contain prehistoric fossils. Lorenzo d’Ambrogio died falling from the cliff while trying to retrieve a fossil. Tiberius, who’s invited the surviving members of the group to a reunion to mark Lorenzo’s death, bribes Stoker to attend the house party with a chance to restore a sculptured Megalosaurus that their father commissioned years ago and they'd thought lost. The party's guests include Sir James MacIver, a wealthy Scot; his wife, Augusta; Italian Count Pietro Salviati; and Beatrice, his younger American wife. Also on hand are the Greshams, a local doctor and his sister, who were there when Lorenzo died. Once at Cherboys, Veronica stumbles on reporter J.J. Butterworth, her frenemy, who’s looking for a story while pretending to be a kitchen maid. When Beatrice dies suddenly at a dinner held in the Megalosaurus, at first it seems that her weak heart gave out, but in fact she was poisoned. Now the quarreling Veronica and Stoker must work again as a team to find the killer before he strikes again.

Love, lust, and mystery combine in a winning combination.