Nell Fagan has been given the boot from her reporters' job and her career in tatters. However, she has discovered a potential new story that will hopefully get her back into the good graces of Fleet Street. A young man believes that his stepfather has forcibly encased his mother into Blackstone Fell Sanatorium, which resulted in her death. No one takes him seriously. Nell goes to Blackstone but finds more mysteries than just one murder. There also appears to be disappearances connected to Blackstone Tower that are 300 years apart.
Nell attempts to recruit Rachel Savernake but Rachel refuses to help someone who lies to her. However, Rachel is intrigued and does eventually go to Blackstone Fell. Unfortunately, it is not in time for poor Nell, and now Rachel must discover what it was that Nell wanted to hide from Rachel.
I haven’t read any of Martin Edwards books, but I definitely will now! His writing feels like a blending of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen. I actually felt what was missing in this novel was a “Challenge to the Reader” like Ellery Queen does. There is a Clue Finder at the end, which was new to me, but very much like revealing all of the “breadcrumbs”.
There are quite a few characters and plenty of motives. This made the novel fast paced for me. It wasn’t all action, action, action, but more like an exercise for the “little grey cells”. There were also little bits of history comingled throughout the novel that showed how much research the author really put into his work.
Overall, I rate this novel 5 out of 5 stars.
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