The Dungeon House
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
"Readers who enjoy British procedurals will find this multidimensional, multigenerational case very satisfying." —Booklist
The magnificent Dungeon House and gardens overlook Cumbria's remote western coast with its mix of beaches, dunes, and fells, Roman ruins, and nuclear plant. Twenty years ago, the wealthy Whiteleys called it home. But not a happy one. Malcolm Whiteley had begun to disintegrate under financial and emotional pressures. He suspected various men in their social circle of being his wife's lover. After a disastrous party for the neighbours, Lysette told Malcolm their marriage was over. Sadly an old Winchester rifle he had been hiding was at hand…
Fast forward to today. Hannah Scarlett's cold case team is looking into the three-year-old disappearance of Lily Elstone whose father Gray had been Malcolm's accountant. The investigation coincides with yet another disappearance of a teenage girl: Shona Whiteley, daughter of Malcolm's nephew Nigel, who now lives in the Dungeon House despite its tragic history. As Hannah's team digs down into the past, doubts arise about what really happened the night Malcolm killed his wife and 16-year-old daughter Amber, then himself.
Most of the people once close to the Whiteleys still live nearby. And one Joanna Footit, and her secrets, now returns from London. While Hannah leads the complex police inquiries, it is her lover, historian Daniel Kind, who supplies Hannah with the lead that unlocks the whole. Does it come too late?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Edwards's engrossing seventh Lake District mystery (after 2013's The Frozen Shroud), Malcolm Whiteley, the proprietor of the majestic Dungeon House, is depressed over business problems and enraged at his wife Lysette's infidelities and her request for a divorce. Following the annual barbecue for family and friends, a drunken Whiteley realizes that he can use his Winchester rifle to resolve these issues. Flash forward 20 years to the present. Det. Chief Insp. Hannah Scarlett's Cumbria police team is working on the case of Lily Wellstone, a teenage girl who disappeared three years earlier. Lily's father was Whiteley's accountant. Coincidence strikes again when the daughter of Nigel Whiteley, Malcolm's nephew and the Dungeon House's current occupant, goes missing. Edwards has a way of tangling lives and spinning a cloud of suspicion over several characters, sending readers up and down wonderfully entertaining blind alleys that keep interest high until the unexpected, though slightly anticlimactic, end.