Blood From a Stone
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Gentleman sleuth and author Jack Haldean investigates a series of deaths linked to an aristocratic family in this atmospheric traditional mystery set in the 1920s.
When Mrs Paxton, related to the aristocratic Leigh family of Sussex, is found poisoned in her bedroom one morning, fingers point towards her artist nephew Terence Napier, seen leaving the house earlier that previous evening after a row over her will.
Months later and Napier has never been found, but curiously a dead body is discovered in a train compartment, and scattered at the dead man's feet are the famous Leigh sapphires - a necklace owned by Mrs Paxton, but destined to go back to the Leighs in the event of her death.
Scotland Yard once again call upon the services of author Jack Haldean to help solve this most complicated of cases. Soon there are links to a serial thief and murderer, known as the The Vicar, and it seems there is more to this case than a family feud over inheritance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Christie and Sayers fans will find Gordon-Smith's seventh Jack Haldean whodunit set in post-WWI England (after 2012's Trouble Brewing) a well-crafted throwback to the golden age of detection that pairs deduction with solid writing. Crime writer Haldean gets involved in solving the case of a gruesome murder aboard a train. A man who was stabbed to death had his head ripped off when someone positioned the corpse at an open window, apparently in an effort to stymie the police by delaying identification of the victim. Robbery was not the motive, given that the killer left behind a stash of valuable sapphires. The murder may be the work of a thief known as the Vicar, whose calling card (Simon Templar like) is the drawing of a cross with a halo on top. The railway slaying may connect with Terence Napier, a man suspected of murdering his aunt. The author cleverly draws the various threads together in the series' best entry to date.
