Death in the Aviary
The Charlotte Blood Chronicles
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
A ‘locked lift’ mystery for Golden Age crime fans, from award-winning author Victoria Dowd.
New Year’s Eve 1928 – In the grand residence of Ravenswick Abbey, isolated in the wilds of Dartmoor, nine members of the household step into an ornate lift. The power fails. The lift stops. In the darkness, a single shot is fired.
When the light returns, Charles Ravenswick — the heir to the Ravenswick fortune — is dead on the floor. No one could have got in or out. All have motives, and none have alibis.
A year later under the pretence of reporting on the family’s infamous ravens, sparky Charlotte Blood investigates. She finds a house haunted by suspicion and secrets. She must unravel the mystery and with it the terrible truth behind the entire Ravenswick family. Her search will not only lead her down a dangerous path, it will reveal dark secrets that lurk in her own life...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ho-hum locked-room mystery from Dowd (Murder Most Cold) centers on frustrated 1920s London gossip columnist Charlotte Blood, who longs to be taken seriously as a reporter. Charlotte's chance comes when her curmudgeonly editor-in-chief sends her undercover as an ornithologist to Dartmoor's Ravenswick Abbey, the home of the raven-obsessed Ravenswick family. There, she's tasked with investigating the year-old murder of Charles Ravenswick and the subsequent sale of the family's priceless manuscripts. Widowed by WWI, raised in a bubble, and lacking all knowledge of birds, Charlotte gets off to a rocky start at the estate, where she's rattled by spooky winds and the sounds of untraceable footsteps. Packed with Easter eggs—the Dartmoor setting, ghostly hounds, and swooping ravens conjure Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe all at once—Dowd's plot eventually gets consumed by its influences. Add in overwrought prose, an unappealing protagonist, and a plodding pace, and the result is a swing and a miss. Gothic mystery fans would be better served by Mary Dixie Carter's Marguerite by the Lake.
