The Island
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The wedding of Matthew Grand's sister is marred by cold-blooded murder in the intriguing new Grand & Batchelor Victorian mystery.
March, 1873. Private investigators Matthew Grand and James Batchelor have arrived at Matthew's substantial family home on the Maine coast for the wedding of his sister Martha. Friends and relatives have gathered from far and wide to celebrate the occasion, but nothing is going according to plan. A long-lost cousin turns up out of the blue after an absence of fourteen years. The best man is nowhere to be found. And no one seems to have a good word to say about the bridegroom.
Preparations are thrown into chaos when a body is discovered in an upstairs bedroom. As Grand and Batchelor investigate, they discover that more than one member of the household has a scandalous secret to hide. And several more family skeletons are destined to tumble from the closet before the two enquiry agents uncover the shocking truth
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trow's emotionally unengaging fourth Victorian mystery featuring American Matthew Grand and Englishman James Batchelor (after 2016's The Angel) is long on conjecture and short on detection. In 1873, the two private enquiry agents travel from their base in London to Grand's childhood home near Rye, Maine, to attend the wedding of his younger sister, Martha, to devastatingly handsome Hamilton Chauncey-Wolsey. The evening before the ceremony, the personal maid of the bride's matron of honor is found with her head bashed in. Since the local constable died six months previously, Grand and Batchelor step in as investigators until the police from Boston can arrive. The jaunty enquiry agents are soon busily interviewing all the servants, family members, and guests they can round up, including writer Mark Twain, who's been grafted onto the Grand family tree. No one has a clue whodunit until the killer takes a shot at Batchelor and the penny drops. Those who like serious sleuthing in their mysteries will have to look elsewhere.
