Death Sits Down to Dinner: A Mystery (Lady Montfort Mystery Series, 2)

Author: Arlen, Tessa

Number Of Pages: 336

Details:

Filled with deceptions both real and imagined, Death Sits Down to Dinner is a delightful Edwardian mystery set in London.Lady Montfort is thrilled to receive an invitation to a dinner party hosted by her close friend Hermione Kingsley, the patroness of England's largest charity. Hermione has pulled together a select gathering to celebrate Winston Churchill's 39th birthday. Some of the oldest families in the country have gathered to toast the dangerously ambitious and utterly charming First Lord of the Admiralty. But when the dinner ends, one of the gentlemen remains seated at the table, head down among the walnut shells littering the cloth and a knife between his ribs.Summoned from Iyntwood, Mrs. Jackson helps her mistress trace the steps of suspects both upstairs and downstairs as Hermione's household prepares to host a highly anticipated charity event. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson unravel the web of secrecy surrounding the bright whirlwind of London society, investigating the rich, well-connected and seeming do-gooders in a race against time to stop the murderer from striking again.

Reviews:

"A neatly crafted whodunit that drips with diamonds, titles, and scandals." - Kirkus"Arlen does a good job of depicting a period when class distinctions have become blurred by new money and more relaxed manners. The plot, which includes a slew of red herrings, builds to a startling denouement." - Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

TESSA ARLEN is the author of the Lady Montfort mystery series set in the early 1900s. She is the daughter of a British diplomat, and had lived in or visited her parents in Singapore, Berlin, the Persian Gulf, Beijing, Delhi and Warsaw by the time she was sixteen. She came to the U.S. in 1980 and worked as an H.R. recruiter for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games, where she interviewed her future husband for a job. She lives on Bainbridge Island, in Washington. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Death Sits Down to Dinner By Tessa Arlen St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2016 Tessa Arlen All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-05250-6 CHAPTER 1 A wet and miserable late-autumn day had turned into a bitterly cold winter night as the sun sank unseen below a horizon obscured by a bank of thick gray clouds. The wind veered to the east and the first strong gust gathered force from the estuary and bellowed up the Thames, blowing sprays of puddle water into the air and plastering wet leaves against the legs of those unfortunate enough still to be hurrying homeward. Tucked away in the quiet comfort of her bedroom at Montfort House, Clementine Talbot, the Countess of Montfort, and her maid, Pettigrew, were absorbed in the leisurely business of dressing her for dinner. As they went diligently about their work, engrossed in the particulars of choosing the right shoes for her evening dress and making difficult decisions on the appropriate jewels for the occasion, they enjoyed an intermittent exchange of information on the new cook who had recently taken up her appointment at Montfort House. "Her food is quite nice, I suppose, considering how young she is and not even French, but from somewhere in the north of England; some industrial town like Newcastle or ... Sheffield." Clementine suppressed a smile at Pettigrew's grudging praise. Her maid viewed all changes in the Talbots' London house servants' hall with skepticism and was not naturally given to enthusiasm. The search for the new cook had been a long and worrying business. Clementine was well aware there was little enough to entice her husband away from the family estates at Iyntwood to London. But once convinced he should make the effort, it did not do for him to eat his dinner at the Carlton or White's, where he heard horribly exaggerated accounts from his friends of lucrative rents garnered from the lease of their London houses to the...

EAN: 9781250052506

Release Date: 29-03-2016

Languages: English

Item Note: New and unused. Hardcover Used - Like New Ships fast! 2016

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Hardcover