Murder is for Keeps
A Penny Brannigan Mystery
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
Murder is for Keeps, the latest book in an award-winning mystery series, celebrated for its small-town charm and picturesque Welsh setting, starring amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan.
Local artist Penny Brannigan has been spending her summer painting Gwrych Castle and its surrounding landscapes. A privately owned, castellated Welsh country house, Gwrych has been sadly neglected for decades and is in a heartbreaking state of disrepair. So when she learns architectural historian Mark Baker is leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to restore the castle grounds and gardens to their former grandeur, Penny is thrilled.
But it’s not long before disagreements over the restoration turn deadly, and Penny is horrified to discover the body of a volunteer hidden in a castle outbuilding. Penny enlists her friend Gareth Davies, recently retired from the North Wales Police Service, to help investigate. As the two dig deeper into the castle's history, including its glamorous heyday in the 1920s, they find startling connections between an old, unsolved murder and Gareth's own family, and as they solve the present-day murder, Penny recovers a stunning piece of the castle's architectural heritage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Duncan's lackluster eighth mystery featuring spa owner and artist Penny Brannigan (after 2016's Murder on the Hour), Penny finds a body in the grounds of Gwrych Castle, near her home in North Wales. The dead man volunteered with a crew renovating the castle, and after his developmentally challenged son disappears, Penny pieces together a connection between their family, the renovation's site manager, and a 20-year-old theft. Meanwhile, a skeleton turns up in the castle garden, and Penny's friend Gareth Davies, recently retired from the police force, investigates. Duncan's reliance on dialogue to explicate plot points sometimes leads to stilted conversations and a facile treatment of the characters' emotions, such as when Gareth tells Penny about a new romance. Newcomers might be bewildered by the array of secondary characters, but longtime fans should enjoy cameos from many of Llanelan's quirky residents, whose participation in a pub quiz to raise money for the castle restoration provides a humorous interlude. Anglophiles will savor details about the castle's history and gardens.)