Death and Sensibility
A Jane Austen Society Mystery
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Bookstore owner Erin Coleridge seeks the scoundrel who silenced a conference's keynote speaker in Elizabeth Blake's second charming Jane Austen Society mystery.
When the quaint English town of York hosts a Jane Austen Society conference, bookseller Erin Coleridge is glad to get out of Kirkbymoorside for a while--until featured speaker Barry Wolf suddenly perishes from what appears to be a heart attack.
Erin is suspicious, since Barry had no history of heart disease. But who did him in? Was it the decedent's assistant, Stephen, who was observed chatting to Barry's young wife Luca earlier that night? Might it have been Barry's ex-wife Judith, who was seen arguing with her erstwhile betrothed at the bar? Meanwhile, conference co-chairs Hetty and Prudence have been at one another's throat since the conference. Is one of them the culprit?
Matters of the heart are putting Erin off her guard. Both Detective Inspector Peter Hemming and schoolteacher Jonathan Alder have made gestures of romantic interest, but Erin isn't sure who is her Willoughby and who is her Colonel Brandon. DI Hemming tries to persuade Erin that her entanglement in the murder investigation is far from sensible, but his entreaties come to naught. Dauntlessly, Erin joins forces with Kirkbymoorside's cat lady, Farnsworth, to ferret out the guilty party.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Blake's uneven sequel to 2019's Pride, Prejudice, and Poison takes Kirkbymoorside bookstore owner Erin Coleridge, a member of the Jane Austen Society's Northern Branch, to York, England, for a Jane Austen conference. At the meet and greet in the packed bar of the conference hotel, Erin observes middle-aged Oxford don Barry Wolf, the keynote speaker, looking at his assistant, Stephen Mahoney, with an expression of "pure malice" as Stephen chats in an overly familiar way with Wolf's much younger wife. The next morning, Wolf turns up dead of an apparent heart attack in a hotel cloakroom. Or is it a case of foul play? Not just Stephen might have had reason to murder Wolf, who had a knack for making enemies. Det. Peter Hemming, with whom Erin tangled in the previous book, investigates, as does Erin, despite being warned off by Peter. An ingenious plot and an appealing setting help compensate for a nebulous time frame and a sequence of events that can be hard to follow. Jane Austen fans will look forward to seeing more of Erin and friends.
