Upson’s (Two for Sorrow, 2010, etc.) attempt to engage real-life mystery writer Josephine Tey in a murder is not for those...
Three generations of homeowners feel the effects of a violent murder in rural England.
Hester Larkspur’s will, leaving Red Barn Cottage, in Polstead, Suffolk, to her goddaughter Josephine Tey, has a strange codicil. If Josephine wants the cottage, she must sort out Hester’s papers, evaluate their worth and let someone named Lucy Kyte take what she most needs from the cottage. No one, not even Hester’s lawyer, knows who or where Lucy is. When Josephine first visits the place, it’s in such sad disrepair that she isn’t sure she’ll get what she needs, either. The cottage was named for the barn where Maria Marten, a willful young Polstead woman, was murdered and buried more than a century ago. In her prime, Hester was a beautiful and popular actress best known for her role in a play based on the murder, and she fueled the legend by writing a diary that’s a fictionalized account of Maria’s tragic life, as recounted by her best friend. While Josephine gets to know both Maria and Hester through the diary and struggles to make Red Barn Cottage more livable for herself and her lover, Marta Fox, she’s increasingly aware that something is amiss. Not only did Hester die while huddled away in a tiny room that fills Josephine with dread, but some restless presence also demands her attention. Marta, like Josephine, an independent and clear-thinking woman of the 1930s, doesn’t dismiss the idea of a ghost in the house. But Josephine begins to suspect that a living person has played an important part in the more recent history of the cottage—and may mean harm to its new owner in this carefully crafted tale of heartbreak and haunting.
Upson’s (Two for Sorrow, 2010, etc.) attempt to engage real-life mystery writer Josephine Tey in a murder is not for those who want a quick-moving story. For more patient readers, the contemplative tone and historical detail yield their own rewards, along with a couple of clever surprises.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-219545-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bourbon Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Even readers who don’t care for the endless bureaucratic infighting will have to admire this tour de force, in which...
The abduction of one of their own rouses the members of MI5’s dead-end Slough House (Dead Lions, 2013, etc.) to action once more.
As she’s the first to tell everyone, recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish has never been “a joe,” a field agent. She’s just the assistant to Jackson Lamb, who lords it over Slough House as if it weren’t the penultimate stop on the path from success in the Security Service to disgrace and oblivion. But that doesn’t stop her ex-lover Sean Donovan from scooping her up in a van, locking her in a room an hour outside London, and demanding in exchange for her return a copy of a most sensitive intelligence file. Naturally, River Cartwright, the colleague Catherine designates as the one she’d be most likely to trust with her life, makes a hash of his attempt to meet the ransom demand and ends up in a little room of his own being worked over by Nick Duffy of the Dogs, the service’s internal police. That’s no slur against him, though, because the savviest agent in the world (something River’s never come close to being on his best day) would never have suspected the truth about the rabbit hole Catherine’s tumbled down. Her kidnapping, it’s gradually revealed, is both more and less than it seems—less, because her abductors couldn’t be more considerate, except for the one who quickly gets killed; more, because the service itself is so torn between narcissistic careerists and warring factions battling for control that its fate, and presumably that of her majesty’s government, seems to hang in the balance.
Even readers who don’t care for the endless bureaucratic infighting will have to admire this tour de force, in which virtually every single player—good guys, bad guys, all the turncoats and in-betweeners—is somehow connected to British Intelligence.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61695-612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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The astute and unconventional Edwardian pair seem to have entered the pages of a gothic novel for an exhilarating new tale...
An intrepid lepidopterist and her sometime lover are caught up in yet another extravagant adventure in 1888.
Returning to London from Madeira, Veronica Speedwell gets the cold shoulder from her companion in mystery solving, Stoker Templeton-Vane (A Treacherous Curse, 2018, etc.), who’s still furious that he was left out of the unexplained trip. He’s not happy, either, that his elder brother, Tiberius, Lord Templeton-Vane, wants Veronica to accompany him to St. Maddern's Isle off the coast of Cornwall to visit the castle of his old friend Malcolm Romilly, who’s promised to give Veronica some larvae of the Romilly Glasswing butterfly, thought to be extinct. What Tiberius doesn't tell Veronica—yet—is that she'll have to pose as his fiancee to gain the approval of their Catholic host, who wouldn't approve of an unchaperoned single woman. Upon their arrival in Cornwall, they find Stoker, refusing to be left out, waiting to join a group that includes Malcolm; his sister, Mertensia, a tireless gardener; his sister-in-law, Helen; her son, Caspian; and a crew of servants directed by longtime family retainer Mrs. Trengrouse. The island is large enough for farms and a village whose superstitious natives tell tales of piskies and mermaids. Stoker and his brother constantly snipe over Veronica, whom Tiberius works to seduce and Stoker secretly wants to marry. Although she loves Stoker, Veronica fears he’s never gotten over the dreadful marriage that almost killed him and is so independent herself that she’s afraid to commit to more than a physical relationship. Meanwhile, Malcolm’s wife, Rosamund, vanished on their wedding day three years ago, and no one knows whether she’s dead or alive. When Malcolm’s discovery of Rosamund’s traveling bag makes it all but certain that she’s dead, he asks for Veronica and Stoker's help in finding out what happened to her. Slowly, secrets from the past are revealed, and the sleuths find themselves threatened by someone desperate to keep those secrets buried forever.
The astute and unconventional Edwardian pair seem to have entered the pages of a gothic novel for an exhilarating new tale full of wild adventures and treacherous relationships.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-49071-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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