Peril at Pennington Manor by Tracy Gardner

 I was given a free e-copy of this novel by NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thanks to Aunt Midge’s unlikely friendship with Nicholas Pennington, the Duke of Valle Charme, Avery Ayers and her associates at Antiques and Artifacts Appraised head off to their most glamorous assignment yet—cataloguing and appraising the contents of a castle-like mansion on the Hudson River. But regal splendor becomes a backdrop to mayhem when the precious Viktor Petrova timepiece disappears—and housekeeper Suzanne Vick plummets from a parapet to her death.

Avery, her dad William, and colleagues Micah Abbott and Sir Robert Lane soon learn that Suzanne’s predecessor also met with an untimely end. Further, the housekeeper’s suspicious demise coincides with Avery’s discovery that many of the Duke’s most priceless heirlooms have been replaced by fakes.

Detective Art Smith lends his expertise, but the suspect list encompasses the Duke’s entire retinue—including his family. Could the killer be someone intimately familiar with the Pennington estate, such as caretaker couple Ira and Lynn Hoffman, the Penningtons’ chauffeur Roderick, or even one of the heirs to the Pennington fortune?

Then the duke himself is injured in an inexplicable riding accident, and the clock swiftly ticks toward a reckoning with a cold-blooded killer. A criminal mastermind is making a desperate bid for ill-gotten riches…can Avery bring the culprit to justice before her time is up? (Goodreads synopsis)

I have not read anything by Tracy Gardner prior to this. I started out very confused. The opening introduction to Art made it clear that this is not a standalone novel. There were, also, some references to another person and their crime, which wasn’t mentioned, so that was hard to understand as well. I wish there had been a brief “here’s what happened”. I think it would have cleared up why Avery reacted the way she did in the antiquities office. 

From what I can gather Avery had to raise her younger sister for a short time, but that doesn’t seem to change how Tilly reacts to her. There is an interesting relationship between them. Almost as if Tilly is trying to put Avery back in that sister position, but Avery is still focused in the parental idea. I would have liked more of an interaction with Avery, Tilly, and the rest of their family about how they should all be adjusting now. With that said, I liked Avery’s mindset, and how she handles her temper. I didn’t feel she necessarily put herself in danger, and how she purposely thought through her actions and the possible consequences.

The mystery kept me guessing the whole way. I wasn’t really expecting the perpetrator until, maybe, the last 4 chapters. Avery doesn’t really have a lot of interaction with the suspects. Instead Avery and the reader seem to grab most of the information from the Detectives on the case or from outside sources. So I thought that was really unique to this character. I had the same idea as Avery when it came to the imitations. 

Overall I rate this novel 4 out of 5 stars. I will follow this author and read the first of the series, so that I am better prepared for the next in this series. Hopefully, there will be another in the series.