Murder at Chateau sur Mer
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries…
Late nineteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, is home to some of America’s wealthiest citizens. For society reporter Emma Cross, a less well-heeled cousin to the illustrious Vanderbilts, trailing gossip and glamour will lead her straight into murder . . .
Covering a polo match for the Observer, Emma’s job is to take note of the real players off the field—Newport’s well-bred elite. But the fashionable façade is breached when a woman in gaudy clothing creates a scene demanding to speak to the wife of Senator George Wetmore—until she is escorted off the grounds by the police.
The next morning, police detective Jesse Whyte asks Emma to meet him at the Wetmores’ Bellevue Avenue home, Chateau sur Mer, where the senator’s wife, Edith, has mysteriously asked to see her. Upon entering the mansion, Emma is confronted with a crime scene—the intruder from the polo match lies dead at the foot of a grand staircase.
To avoid scandal, Edith Wetmore implores Emma to use her reporter skills and her discretion to investigate. When Emma learns the victim was a prostitute—and pregnant—she wonders if the senator was being blackmailed. As Emma peels back layers of deception and family secrets, she may have met her match in a desperate killer who will trample anyone who gets in the way . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1897, Maxwell's middling fifth Gilded Newport mystery (after 2016's Murder at Rough Point) finds reporter Emma Cross, who writes the weekly Fancies and Fashions page for the Newport, R.I., Observer, at a polo match. In the stands, she sees the police intercept Lilah Buford, a woman forced "to depend upon the patronage of gentlemen in order to make her way in the world," who was attempting to speak with the wife of Senator George Wetmore in a restricted seating area. The following day, Emma get a call from Det. Jesse Whyte of the Newport PD, who wants her to meet him at the Wetmore home, Chateau sur Mer, where Lilah has been found at the foot of a staircase with her neck broken. Distrustful of the authorities, Mrs. Wetmore asks Emma to investigate Lilah's death and prevent any scandal. Even as Emma does so, she's unsettled by the return to her life of a man whose "chiseled features" "jog" her pulse. Unremarkable sleuthing and underdeveloped characters are unlikely to attract newcomers.
