Murder at the Villa Byzantine
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
What role does the mysterious Miss Hope, former governess to the Bulgarian royal family, play in the bizarre murder at the Villa Byzantine? And does she in fact actually exist?
Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne attend a birthday party for one of their Hampstead neighbours, little knowing they will end up investigating the grisly death of one of Melisande Chevret's other guests. The ageing actress becomes a natural suspect when her love rival is killed. But after that first murder, another murder takes place at the Villa Byzantine. The owner of the exotically styled house is royal biographer Tancred Vane, but he swears he is innocent. And surely his new friend Catherine Hope, an elderly lady helping him with his research, can have nothing to do with it?
It looks as though the victim's daughter is to blame - but how likely is it that a teenage girl should have a dainty silk handkerchief bearing her monogram? And would she drop it so conveniently beside her mother's dead body?
Praise for R.T. Raichev:
'Deftly mixes dark humor and psychological suspense, its genteel surface masking delicious deviancy.'
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
'Fascinating ... Recalls the best of the Golden Age of Detective fiction.'
Lady Antonia Fraser
'Mixes Henry James's psychological insight with Agatha Christie's whodunit plotting skills ... Raichev once again triumphs.'
Library Journal (starred review)
'I have read all of Raichev's books. They are very clever. I really am a fan.'
R.L. Stine
'A whodunit with more twists than a snake in a basket.'
Robert Barnard, Golden Dagger winner
'Adds a P. D. Jamesian subtlety to the comfortable Christie formula. Antonia Darcy is a terrific sleuth, and Raichev is a very clever writer, indeed.'
Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Raichev's middling sixth contemporary evocation of golden age whodunits featuring private detective Maj. Hugh Payne and his wife, mystery writer Antonia Darcy (after 2010's The Curious Incident at Claridge's), the couple reluctantly attend a birthday party for actress Melisande Chevret. The guests, an array of improbable eccentrics, include Stella Markoff, a woman who used to work for the rightful heir to the Bulgarian throne. When Markoff is later decapitated with a sword in the Villa Byzantine, the London home of her collaborator in a biography of another member of the Bulgarian royal family, the case appears open and shut, but Payne and Darcy are determined to look further. A sluggish plot goes hand in hand with the author's failure to rise to the challenge of making modern characters act and talk like ones from the 1930s without veering into parody.
