Down the Garden Path
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Tessa Fields was left on the doorstep of an English vicarage and adopted by the vicar and his wife. At 21 she’s devised a plan to discover who her birth mother was. Her plan involves suitor Harry Harkness, and faking amnesia, and imposing on two elderly ladies. Amidst a cast of eccentric characters, Tessa is not entirely surprised by the bizarre murder she stumbles on. Mystery by Dorothy Cannell; originally published by St. Martin’s Press
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cannell's second mystery boasts the effects that made her The Thin Woman a delicious debut. Brimful of surprises, the story related by Tessa Fields gives off whiffs of Restoration comedies, except for the sobering moment when a murder abruptly halts the fun. Until then, the reader is delighted to let the author lead on "down the garden path,'' where Tessa thinks she's leading her hostesses, elderly Primrose and Hyacinth Tramwell. In collusion with her beloved, Harry Harkness, Tessa pretends amnesia in hopes that the sisters will let her rest in the Cloisters, the Tramwell estate since the days of Henry VIII. Tessa believes the mansion holds the secret of her birth, possibly as the illegitimate infant of an absent Tramwell relation. The young woman's snooping is complicated by her hostesses' butler (named Butler) and housemaid Chantal, an intellectual gypsy. At a neighbors' soiree, Hyacinth and Primrose reveal themselves as card sharks, bringing a good friend of Tessa's to the Cloisters to remonstrate with them. Tessa's suspicions of the sisters seem valid when someone strangles the man and she learns that they have been only pretending to believe in her masquerade. The killing, an unfortunate and unnecessary plot departure, is no real deterrent to enjoying an otherwise robust tale of intrigue and true love. December 26
