In this eleventh book in Barron's Jane Austen mystery series, Jane is visiting her brother Edward Knight and his daughter Fanny (Jane's favorite niece), at her brother's principal estate, Godmersham Park in Kent. The location is not far from the cathedral city of Canterbury; indeed the old Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury runs through the Park with a side path leading to the local church.
The tale begins with Jane and her family attending a wedding at nearby Chilham Castle. Mrs.Adelaide Fiske, a widow, is marrying Captain Andrew MacAllister, an officer on the Marquis (and future Duke) of Wellington's staff. A brilliant match for Adelaide Fiske, and as different from her first husband (a rogue and wastrel) as a man can be. At the height of the festivities, a mysterious man arrives at the door to deliver a gift for the bride: a bag of tamarind seeds. Adelaide is clearly upset but won't say why. The very next day, the mystery man is found shot dead on the Pilgrim's Way. When the dead man is identified as Adelaide's first husband, it becomes a scandal as well as a crime. Even though Adelaide was notified several years ago that Curzon Fiske had died in Ceylon, because he was still alive when she married Captain MacAllister, she could be accused of bigamy, adultery --- and murder. Edward Knight, as magistrate, is called on to investigate (with Jane's clear-eyed assistance). It's up to Jane to discover why Fiske faked his death and then returned to Kent, and who would want to pin his death on Adelaide. A clever and complex plot, a combination of real and fictional characters, all delivered with the closest approximation to Austen's own ironic voice I've ever seen.
Click HERE to read the starred *review from Publishers Weekly
Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews
Click HERE to read the review from the Denver Post (Barron's hometown newspaper
Click HERE to read about Barron's background research for the book from her blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment