SHADOWS AND LIES
Kirkus Reviews
June 2007
Section: Fiction; Mystery
A murder on an English country estate provokes an investigation that
must travel back in time for answers.
In 1909, Sebastian Chetwynd journeys to his Shropshire home with his
neighbor Louisa Fox, suffragette and medical student. Soon after his
arrival, the murdered body of an unidentified woman is found. Seb has
a feeling his family is somehow involved. When a local detective and a
man from Scotland Yard set out to solve the mystery, their path leads
back to London. Eccles also reveals the thoughts of a woman who is
slowly recovering her memory after a deadly bus accident nearly took
her life. In a twist of fate, amnesiac Hannah Jackson Smith’s path
had crossed Louisa Fox’s when they both were trapped in the siege
of Mafeking during the Boer War. The murdered woman was an Armenian
refugee working as Hannah’s maid. Is the unidentified child found
on the bus Hannah’s son? Was she the mistress of Sebastian’s older
brother Harry, who was killed in the accident? Does Harry’s twin sister
Sylvia know more than she’s telling? As the detectives keep digging,
a captivating tale of love, sacrifice, greed and ambition emerges.
Once more, as so often in Eccles (The Shape of Sand, 2006, etc.),
the past shapes a present packed with both admirable and despicable
characters and interesting bits of historical lore.
Publication Date: 8/1/2007 0:00:00
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin’s
Minotaur Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-312-36896-8
Price: $24.95
Author: Eccles, Marjorie
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress