A tale based on historical facts that’s perfect for lovers of classic British mysteries.
A mysterious letter plunges a London detective into a world of myths and murder.
After the death of her husband in World War I, Kate Shackleton started a detective agency with the help of former police officer assistant Jim Sykes and her multitalented housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden. In July 1930, she gets a letter from someone named Ronald Creswell, an up-and-comer at Salts Mill in Yorkshire whose parents work as caretakers at Milner Field, a mansion with a checkered past. He asks Kate to journey to the South Lodge at Milner Field, where his family lives, so he can tell her a story that he thinks will be of interest. Curious, she agrees after doing some research on the town of Saltaire, the mill, and the mansion. Unfortunately, just after she arrives at the Lodge, Ronnie’s friend David Fairburn shows up with the news that he's found Ronnie's body floating in the mill's reservoir. There had been some conflict: Ronnie and Pamela Whitaker, a mill owner’s daughter, had been planning to marry despite opposition from both families. Pamela’s mother is determined that she marry wealthy Kevin Foxcroft, whose family business meshes with their own, though her father had developed a secret fondness for Ronnie. Pamela, who blames her parents’ opposition for Ronnie's death, has moved to her grandmother’s home, but she trusts Kate to find the truth. Mr. Whitaker hires Kate to look into the death, clear Fairburn, get the mansion ready for an auction, and look into industrial espionage at the mill. Accordingly, Mrs. Sugden organizes a cleaning team for the neglected mansion; Sykes looks into possible espionage; and Kate hunts Ronnie’s killer. The ill-fated mansion was built over an Elizabethan manor house with a well reputed to hold the bones of a murdered woman. Past and the present both come under investigation before the truth emerges.
A tale based on historical facts that’s perfect for lovers of classic British mysteries.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781643857602
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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