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After an inmate escapes from prison -- and a body turns up on the moor -- Lord Charles Sheridan and his American wife, Kate, join forces with Arthur Conan Doyle to determine if the convict and the killer are
one and the same.
Publishers Weekly
Mysterious Dartmoor is the darkly atmospheric setting for Paige's latest installment in the Victorian series (after 2001's Death at Epsom Downs) featuring Sir Charles Sheridan and Kate Ardleigh Sheridan. Sir Charles is visiting Dartmoor Prison as part of his ongoing project to fingerprint prisoners, while Kate is doing research for one of the "penny dreadfuls" she writes under the name Beryl Bardwell. The Sheridans have been invited to attend a seance at Thornworthy Castle, the home of Sir Edgar Duncan and his beautiful wife, Rosalind. Their fellow guests include the noted author Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle and a journalist named Fletcher Robinson, with whom Conan Doyle is collaborating on a new story. When one of the attendees at the seance whispers of murder, the others look askance, but a dead body soon turns up. Meanwhile, a murderer has escaped from Dartmoor Prison, one in whom Sir Charles had taken great interest. Sir Charles suspects the man may be innocent of the crime for which he was imprisoned, but now Charles and Kate must prove as well that the accused killer isn't responsible for this latest murder. Charles finds himself working with the famed author, who has something of a reputation for being interested in unusual crimes. Though Conan Doyle disconcertingly comes off a bit self-interested and stubborn, Paige has crafted another convincingly detailed Victorian mystery, sure to please fans and new readers alike. (Feb. 5) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Talk about dedication. When Lord Charles Sheridan's American wife Kate wants to research locations for the latest novel she's setting on the Devon moors, her devoted husband ensconces her in unlovely Princetown, in the shadow of Dartmoor prison, so that he can indulge his fondness for amateur criminology while she soaks up atmosphere. Since Kate's old friend Patsy Marsden, intrepid photographer and traveler, is also on hand, along with their acquaintance Arthur Conan Doyle, who's researching his own tale of the moors, the sojourn promises pleasures both scenic and social-as well as an opportunity for Charles to bend prison officials' ears about the breakthrough science of fingerprint analysis and to interview Prisoner 351, Dr. Samuel Spencer, a Dartmoor guest ever since midway through his trial for killing his wife, when he unaccountably changed his plea to guilty. What comes as a bonus is unscheduled mystery: Soon after Spencer escapes from Dartmoor, local squire Sir Edgar Duncan is found murdered-a shocking development foreshadowed during a seance Lady Rosalind Duncan had arranged with medium Nigel Westcott. While Doyle, more successful as romantic lead than detective, chases false clues, Lord Charles, who's just "like Sherlock Holmes . . . only smarter," uses a convenient eyewitness to the killing to bring the guilty to book. A fantasia on themes from The Hound of the Baskervilles whose determined focus on the Sheridans (Death at Epsom Downs, not reviewed, etc.) shows an altogether more lighthearted side of the moors than Doyle ever revealed.
