The Chessman
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
The message consisted of one neatly typewritten line: I am killing you slowly. You are going to die. The Chessman.
Isabelle Stanton and Sue Castradon always arranged the flowers in the village church on Fridays. But Sue was glad to escape the church that morning. She had rowed over breakfast with her husband Ned, who bitterly resented her association – however fleeting – with the handsome Simon Vardon. Sue didn’t think things could get worse – until she opened the cupboard…
When a mutilated corpse is discovered in the sleepy village of Croxton Ferriers, Jack Haldean finds an odd clue at the scene of the crime: a black marble chess knight with crystal eyes. Is murder just a game? It could be – to a killer who calls himself The Chessman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Sussex village of Croxton Ferriers, the setting for Gordon-Smith's stellar ninth mystery set in post-WWI England (after 2014's After the Exhibition), is rocked to its core when a badly mutilated body turns up in the local church. One of the two women who discovered the remains in a cupboard is Isabelle Stanton, a cousin of amateur sleuth Jack Haldean, a fighter pilot during the war who soon gets on the case. The other is Isabelle's friend, strikingly beautiful Sue Castradon, whose husband, Ned, was badly disfigured in the war and who bears grudges against everyone in general but one person in particular: Sir Matthew Vardon, a greedy, scurrilous old rascal, whose son, Simon, is smitten with Sue. A chess piece left in the church cupboard may be a vital clue. Plausible red herrings abound as Jack and the village residents ponder the case and all its incongruities over tea in the drawing rooms of Croxton Ferriers. Some readers will stay up all night to finish this fine traditional mystery.
