The Dead Come to Stay
A Novel
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“A classic whodunit and a deeper family mystery.” –The Washington Post
A delightful new cozy crime novel from the award-winning author of the "twisty, engaging, and thoroughly unexpected" (Deanna Raybourne) The Framed Women of Ardemore House
An amateur autistic sleuth. A wry English detective. A murder case that thrusts them both into the wealthy world of the rare artifacts trade...
Jo Jones can't seem to catch a break. She'd hoped that trading in her city life for the cozy, peaceful hills of North Yorkshire to take over her family estate would finally be her chance for a "fresh start.” Instead, she's been thrust further into the past than she thought possible. The estate property is littered with traces of ancestors that Jo never knew existed, including a mysterious woman depicted in a half-destroyed painting inside the estate – and also including Jo's late uncle, who may hold the key to her cryptic family history. Add to all this the gossipy town politics that Jo's forced to navigate as a neurodivergent transplanted American. And that's not even getting to the murder yet.
When the prickly town detective James MacAdams discovers a body in the woods with coincidental ties to Jo Jones, they're forced to team up on the case. The clues will lead them into the wealthiest locales of Yorkshire, from sparkling glass hotels to luxury property sites to elite country clubs. But below the glittering surfaces, Jo and MacAdams discover darker schemes brewing. Local teens, many of them international refugees, are disappearing left and right, and each case is somehow linked to a shady architectural firm – which also happened to employ the dead man from the woods.
What began as an unusual murder case plunges Jo and MacAdams into the underground world of rare artifacts and antique trading... and the murderer may not be finished yet...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schillace's sweet if underheated sequel to The Framed Women of Ardemore House finds autistic amateur sleuth Josephine "Jo" Jones continuing to rebuild her life in North Yorkshire while tending to her family's crumbling estate. After surviving a fire in the property's main house and struggling to get her freelance editing career off the ground, Jo decides to rent out a room in her cottage. She's happy to take a secretive young man named Ronan Foley as a tenant, but a short time later, he turns up dead. Reluctantly, Jo is pulled into another murder investigation, which means more awkwardness and romantic tension between her and dreamy DCI James MacAdams, even as his colleagues remain largely insensitive to Jo's neurodivergence. As Jo and James question suspects, they unearth a seedy underworld involving refugees and valuable artifacts being smuggled in and out of England. The semi-gothic setting and Jo's ongoing quest for answers about her hazy family history tend to be more involving than the rote mystery plot, but Schillace's characters remain a pleasure to spend time with. This isn't quite up to the standards of its predecessor, but it's still a solid cozy.
