Face Down Beneath the Eleanor Cross

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 28 FEB 2000

Emerson has the place names and customs right in this Elizabethan whodunnit set in 1565, but too often her lords and ladies and various commoners, despite the occasional archaism ("certes," "mayhap"), sound and act like stock characters in a modern crime melodrama. Somebody lures Lady Susanna Appleton (returning from Face Down Among the Winchester Geese) to a shady London tavern for a rendezvous with her estranged husband, Sir Robert Appleton. When Sir Robert doesn't appear, Susanna leaves. Shortly thereafter he falls dead at her feet, beneath one of London's landmarks, the Eleanor Cross. Well known as an herbalist and healer, Susanna is arrested for his murder, since witnesses claim to have seen her poison his food at the tavern earlier that day. That Eleanor has no motive is, oddly, never an issue. (This kind and educated woman had no illusions about Sir Robert's low character during her arranged marriage.) After a spell in Newgate prison, Susanna is released and sets out to find the real killer before she's tried and, if convicted, burned at the stake. The prime suspects are Sir Robert's several mistresses, whom Eleanor spends the next few months visiting throughout England. Everyone assembles back in London for her trial, where in improbable, Perry Mason fashion Susanna provokes her husband's murderer into making what amounts to a confession in front of judge and jury. While the killer's identity is far from predictable, sophisticated readers won't much care about it, as the author fails to give her characters sufficient depth against the historical backdrop.