Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Blood Promise by Mark Pryor

The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel by Mark Pryor --- 286 pages

Third in the series of murder mysteries featuring Hugo Marston, the diplomatic security officer in charge of the American Embassy in Paris. The first two books in the series are The Bookseller and The Crypt Thief.

As with the other two books, The Blood Promise is a mystery with its roots in the past: in this case, the fate of a child during the French Revolution lies hidden in an old sailor's chest, its significance forgotten by the family that has had the chest in its keeping for two hundred years.

When a U.S. Senator with a maverick reputation and Presidential ambitions arrives in Paris to negotiate an obscure territorial dispute between the United States and France, Hugo is assigned the unenviable duty of shepherding the Senator through the negotiations. The meeting gets off to a rocky start when the Senator has too much to drink at the welcoming dinner and then insists that someone came into his room during the night and tried to steal his briefcase.

In order to placate the Senator, Hugo gets a friend of his from the Paris police to do a cursory investigation, only to discover to their amazement, that a fingerprint found in the Senator's bedroom matches a fingerprint taken at a house where an old woman was murdered during a robbery some months before. Only gradually does Hugo come to realize that someone was willing to kill to get possession of the sailor's chest and the secret it contains --- and someone is willing to kill again and again to keep that secret buried forever.

Click HERE to find out more about author Mark Pryor and plans for further Hugo Marston adventures.

No comments:

Post a Comment