Deadly Inheritance
An Ursula Grandison Mystery 1
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Accompanying American heiress Belle Seldon on a visit to her ancestral family home in Somerset, Ursula Grandison soon discovers that the decaying stately Mountstanton House and its inhabitants has many secrets, including a crumbling marriage and a missing dowry. When Ursula discovers the drowned body of the nurserymaid, she is determined to reveal the killer and, in doing so, reveals a tangled web of deception and adultery that threatens the reputation of the house of Mountstanton.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1903 England, this series debut from Laurence (The Mermaid's Feast) starts stronger than it ends. Wealthy Chauncey Seldon has retained fellow American Ursula Grandison to accompany his younger daughter, Belle, on a visit to her married sister, Helen, at Mountstanton House in Somerset. Ursula must also find out why Helen isn't using her dowry to restore her decaying mansion of a home. She finds the household on edge, with "currents and cross-currents" of tension. Helen is far from pleased to see Ursula, after a past incident not detailed at the outset. And the atmosphere is hardly improved when Ursula literally stumbles on the corpse of a missing servant, Polly Brown, and suspects that Polly didn't die from an accidental fall. Laurence does a good job of setting the stage, making the undertones of dysfunctional family dynamics a source of tension. But the plot limps toward an end that many readers may feel wasn't worth the journey.
