Thursday, March 03, 2011

Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie

Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie. Kathy Lynn Emerson. 1997. St. Martin's Press. 208 pages.

Steam rose from the marrow-bone pie until the old man's sharp beak of a nose wrinkled in delight. John Bexwith sat at the lord's place at the elegant refectory table, one the late Sir George had looted from a monastery at the time of the Dissolution. Sir George had taken two long oaken benches as well and now all three pieces adorned the dais at one end of the great hall at Appleton Manor.

Face Down in The Morrow-Bone Pie is the first in Kathy Lynn Emerson's Lady Susanna Appleton mystery series--a mystery series set in Elizabethan England. This mystery begins with the death of Appleton's steward, John Bexwith, and a series of mysterious letters from their lawyer. His death wouldn't seem strange or unnatural--he was an older man--but then the letters arrive. Letters that allege there is a ghost haunting the place, that this "ghost" has frightened all the servants away. That this ghost frightened the steward to death.  Politics keeps her husband from addressing this concern, from managing his estate-in fact they remove him from England altogether--and against her husband's expressed wishes, Lady Appleton decides to visit Appleton Manor herself. She does not believe in ghosts. And she is insistent that a new steward be found, that new servants be hired in case the former servants persist in this superstitious belief. But secrets and mysteries abound as she discovers the hard way! Still, she's a brilliant woman, and if anyone can solve this mystery, it is Susanna!

I liked this one.

© 2011 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This books sounds like so much fun!!! Strong-minded women who break convention generally make such delightful characters!!

Kailana said...

This sounds entertaining. If anything the cover is very different!