The Perfect Daughter
A Nell Bray Mystery
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Verona North had seemed the perfect daughter. She'd surprised her friends by leaving her home to attend art school in London, but they'd thought it was a normal, youthful rebellion which wouldn't last very long. However, when she did return home in the summer of 1914, it was to die--pregnant and with her body full of morphine.
Her cousin, Nell Bray, isn't wholly convinced she committed suicide and is positive she was not an addict. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Nell discovers that her cousin was leading a double life--on the one hand, consorting with a group of Bohemian artists and anarchists, and on the other, collecting information on the suspected "enemies of the state" for the secret service. But where did Verona's loyalty lie? With her family, her friends or her paymasters? What did she know that caused one of them to kill her, and who was the father of her child?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this ninth, engaging Nell Bray mystery (after 1999's Absent Friends), set in England on the eve of WWI, suffragettes clash with police, prison inmates are hunger-striking and immigrants from various suspect countries endure harassment, while a community of aesthetes and artists tries to remain above it all. Amidst the political chaos, feminist crusader and freelance gumshoe Nell finds the body of her cousin, Verona North, hanging in the family boathouse. While Nell feels no remorse at her self-absorbed young cousin's demise, the swiftly delivered verdict of suicide smells fishy to her. Nell's ensuing investigation entangles her with opium eaters, socialists and socialites; the closer she gets to penetrating the heart of Verona's mystery, the more bewildering her chase becomes. Was her young cousin really the pure and troubled young woman of her parents' memories? Or was she involved in some dangerous business that ended in her elimination by dark forces unknown? Linscott effortlessly creates the atmosphere of prewar Britain, with its combination of excitement and innocence that, like Verona's, is just about to be cut short forever. Her characters are vivid and appealing, especially Nell herself, whose wry tone keeps her first-person narration from becoming self-righteous. This is an intelligent and exciting story, by an author with both a deft touch and a mischievous voice. FYI: Absent Friends won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger and the Herodotus Award from the Historical Mystery Appreciation Society for the Best International Historical Mystery of 1999.