Girl Series

The Girl with the Phony Name

A Mystery

Charles Mathes

- 4.0 • 1 Rating

- $11.99

- $11.99

So reads the fine lettering on the back of the intricate, ornate Celtic brooch Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine has just inherited. Lucy, an independent twenty-nine-year-old orphan, has devoted a considerable amount of time and energy trying to unravel the mystery surrounding her past. Having contacted everyone in five hundred phone books whose name even vaguely resembled Trelaine or MacAlpin to no avail, all she knows is that her parents were killed in a car crash in western Massachusetts twenty-eight years ago. Her luck changes when she sees a newspaper ad from a law firm inquiring as to the whereabouts of one Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine. The ad leads her to an "inheritance," which is no more than the Celtic brooch stolen from her after the car crash so many years ago, but it does provide her with a fresh trail of clues to follow, clues that take her to New York City. To make ends meet while continuing her investigations, she takes a job with hyperactive business entrepreneur Tak Wing, owner of the Neat 'n' Tidy chain of funeral parlors. Determined to help Lucy find her true identity, Tak Wing insists that they travel to the Scottish Hebrides, with Lucy disguised as a punk rocker. From kidnapping to grave-robbing to tea with the local laird, Lucy's adventures propel her toward a conclusion that may shake the British Empire to its foundations.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 3, 1992

Convoluted and pretty wacky, this first novel features a woman who never knew her parents, a silver brooch that's the key to her mysterious origins and a happy-go-lucky Chinese undertaker who helps her trace her past. Thirty years after she, as a newborn child, was the only survivor of a car crash in New England, Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine, who has abandoned the quest to identify her parents, is named in a will. But all she inherits is a large, unattractive brooch engraved with Gaelic words and her name. The unemployed onetime Harvard student takes the Celtic pin to New York City, where she tries to discover its provenance and finds work with a jolly, top hat-wearing Chinese expatriate who has established a chain of ``Neat 'n' Tidy'' funeral homes/crematoria. Her boss generously flies her to Scotland to learn of her lineage, and what she discovers casts doubt on whether Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine is indeed her real name. Despite its zany characters and the unusual brooch with its intriguing history, contrived and improbable events overwhelm Mathes's tale.

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