Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave
And Other Stories
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Internationally bestselling author Antonia Fraser finds murder and mayhem in the most incongruous places, from sunny island paradises to the opera, in these nine superb short stores—four featuring Jemima Shore, investigative reporter.
Rescued from freezing London by an assignment in the West Indies, Jemima Shore looks forward to sunshine and rum punch, and maybe a little moonlight and romance. Instead she finds herself embroiled in the heated politics of an all-too-extended family in the title story. An impromptu recitation of the ballad “The Tragedy of Sir Patrick Spens” sparks another tragedy in the hallowed halls of academe in “The Blude-Red Wine.”
Antonia Fraser proves herself equally at home exploring the dark hearts and lethal secrets on the other side of the law. In “Out for the Countess,” a jealous wife thrills to the beauty of an operatic tale of betrayal and suffering, while engineering an equally dramatic revenge for the lovers who wronged her. Literate, sophisticated, deliciously witty, these nine stories are a welcome addition to the sleuthing exploits of Jemima Shore and an introduction to other, shadier characters Antonia Fraser creates with great zest.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The whole is less than the sum of its parts in this disappointing collection of nine tales, four featuring series heroine Jemima Shore (a TV investigative reporter seen most recently in The Cavalier Case ) and five with various first-person narrators. The title story takes stylish Jemima to a Caribbean island to interview the last member of an old plantation family, a sweet and eccentric old lady who turns up dead. In ``Getting to Know You,'' Jemima has equally bad luck when she tries to interview a female ex-con and is met instead by an unstable man determined to become acquainted with her--intimately. In ``The Moon Was to Blame,'' two English couples on vacation in Greece are dismayed by scruffy beach bums and an unfortunate accident. Fraser tends to kill time in her longer stories; the dawdling pace serves to dispel rather than increase tension. Her repetition of plot elements also takes its toll: on its own, the last story, ``The Twist'' would be a first-rate tale; but it holds no suspense for readers of the previous stories, whose plots turn on the same narrative device.
