Publishers Weekly Reviews
June 11, 2007
REVIEWS; Fiction; Pg. 42

Shadows and Lies

Shadows and Lies
Marjorie Eccles. St. Martin’s Minotaur/Dunne, $24.95 (336p) ISBN
978-0-312-36896-8

Best known for her procedural series featuring English village police
detective Gil Mayo (A Sunset Touch , etc.), Eccles delivers a
satisfyingly complex stand-alone, spanning the years from 1894 to
1909. This acute psychological study slowly untangles the web binding
the fortunes of an Armenian patriot, an amnesiac accident victim and
various members of the aristocratic Chetwynd family and the
wool-selling Armitages of Yorkshire. Dexterously shifting from London
to Shropshire to the British South African outpost of Mafeking,
Eccles explores women’s fight for suffrage and traditionally male
careers, the breakdown of distinctions between the old nobility and
the rich merchant class, and political upheavals in South Africa.
Eccles’s narrative skills and the myriad contextual details make it
easy to forget the mysterious murder victim found on a Shropshire
estate until pulled back by the episodic efforts of the police to
solve the crime. (Aug.)