After Clare
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Will the remains of a soldier be the key that unlocks the secrets of Leysmorton Manor . . . ?
1922. Lady Emily Fitzallan has returned to the country house where she spent her childhood for a family wedding. Leysmorton Manor brings back many memories, especially of her elder sister Clare, who vanished one day after going for a walk, never to return. But the disturbing discovery of a soldier’s skeleton at the base of an ancient Yew tree brings the past shockingly into the present. Could the man’s untimely death have its roots in Clare’s disappearance, which occurred almost half a century ago . . .?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The absence of vivid characters mars this stand-alone set in 1922 England from Eccles (The Shape of Sand). A wedding brings Emily, Lady Fitzallen, reluctantly home to Leysmorton, the family manor house from which her older sister, Clare, disappeared decades earlier. On the eve of the wedding, the discovery of skeletal remains beneath debris from an old tree house presents a new mystery. The corpse, whose skull is staved in, is identified as Peter Sholto, a private who was believed to have died in combat during the Great War. In fact, Sholto deserted, but his father, eager to avoid humiliation over his cowardice, put out the story that he had gone down fighting. Might Sholto's murder be linked to Clare's disappearance? Readers should be prepared for some generic prose (the investigating inspector determines to solve the case, "not just to chalk up one more case solved, but to bring to justice the person who had deprived this young fellow of the right to the life before him").