The fifteenth in Perry's annual holiday novellas featuring supporting characters from her two Victorian murder mystery series in stories that cleverly combine murder and Christmas.
Twenty years ago, in the village of Haslemere, Surrey, a young girl was found raped and murdered. The village doctor, Owen Durward, was accused of the crime. A local barrister, Cullen Wesley, had reluctantly undertaken to defend Durward; then, just before the trial was set to begin, he suddenly withdrew from the case. Although Durward retained another attorney and was subsequently acquitted, no one knew why Wesley had so abruptly withdrawn --- because Wesley died that same night in a freak accident in his own home.
Now Owen Durward has reappeared in Haslemere, declaring his intention to clear his name of lingering suspicions and spreading salacious rumors about Wesley's widow, Rowena.
Rowena doesn't have the strength of will to fight Durward, so in desperation, her grandson Peter sends to their old family friend, Mariah Ellison, and begs her to help.
Mariah is the irascible grandmother of Charlotte Pitt, from Anne Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. For years she's been a penance endured by her dutiful family, but recently she's undergone a transforming experience (see A Christmas Guest - 2005), recognizing her anger is rooted in her own past pain and humiliation. She hasn't seen Rowena in the twenty years since Cullen's death --- she acknowledges that she was secretly in love with Cullen herself and didn't think Rowena was clever enough to deserve such a husband. But all that is bygones; what matters now is to defend Cullen's reputation, to justify Peter's faith in her, and to bring a killer to justice at last.
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Click HERE to read a review from the Historical Novel Society blog.
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