THE CHAPEL IN THE WOODS

Could a jaguar be killing people in a British forest in 1922?

Author and amateur sleuth Jack Haldean has solved many unusual cases, but none as odd and nerve-wracking as the one he investigates while he and his wife, Betty, are visiting Jack’s cousin in Sussex. The nearby estate of Birchen Bower, recently purchased by wealthy Canadian Tom Jago and his wife, Rosalind, has an evil reputation. Its mystique is deepened when the Martins, a couple Jago sent to open the house, vanish along with a cache of valuable jewelry. Certain that Derek Martin, whom he first met while they were serving in World War I, is no thief, Jago hopes for another explanation. The Cayden family, who owned the place for many years, was so eccentric that they released wild animals in the woods in an attempt to re-create the Amazon jungle. A fete the Jagos hold on their property attracts a large crowd, many of them anxious to see the Cayden chapel, which houses the tomb of a reputed Jaguar Princess. Snarls issue forth from the woods, and when Haldean, Betty, Jago, and the man who heard the scary sounds arrive at the locked chapel, they find a mutilated body apparently torn apart by a big cat. Although an expert admits that a cat could have done the deed, Haldean persists in looking for a human killer. But even he is spooked by another death and several incidents that seem impossible to explain.

Sinister events and a complex mystery make this contemporary take on the classic British mystery a real page-turner.