Circle of Shadows
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A locked room. A dark threat. A place of poisonous lies. Germany, 1784. Daniel Clode cannot say whether or not he killed the woman. They were found together in a locked room, dressed for the Carnival. But what of the strange madness he feels, and how did she drown on dry land? Harriet Westerman knows Daniel is not a murderer; her sister would not have married such a man. She and the reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther must travel to the Duke of Maulberg's Court to save him from the silken, venal plotting of the castle, and from the axeman's steel. But their journey across Europe brings them to an alien and capricious land, full of lies and shadows, where no one can be trusted.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Robertson's fourth mystery (after 2012's Island of Bones), the best yet in her late-18th-century historical series, takes widow Harriet Westerman and her investigative partner, anatomist Gabriel Crowther, to Germany's Duchy of Maulberg, where her brother-in-law, Daniel Clode, has been charged with murder. Clode, disoriented and bleeding from an apparent suicide attempt, was found behind a locked door near the smothered corpse of Maria Martesen, Countess of Fraken-Lichtenberg. Westerman and Crowther, having doubts about Clode's guilt, soon find evidence suggesting someone else was the killer. The case is especially sensitive, since Maulberg is in debt to England, and Clode's conviction and execution if they can't clear him could plunge the duchy into financial ruin. Roberston adds in the intrigues of a secret society, the Minervals, whose scheming may have played a part in the death of the countess, among others. The puzzle is intricate enough to satisfy fair-play fans, but it's the perfect prose that puts this in the first rank of the subgenre.
