The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn't well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will and a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad tempered and mean that both his servants and his family hated him.
It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered. Poisoned. With his family gathered to celebrate his birthday, and servants that both feared and despised him, there are more than a dozen prime suspects. But which one of them turned hatred into murder?
Author of over fifty books, Georgette Heyer is the best-known and best-loved of all historical novelists, making the Regency period her own. Her first novel, The Black Moth, published in 1921, was written at the age of fifteen to amuse her convalescent brother; her last was My Lord John. She wrote twelve detective stories, which earned her much critical acclaim and the title 'Queen of Crime.' Georgette Heyer died in 1974 at the age of seventy-one.
Georgette Heyer's mystery novels:
April 2006
Death in the Stocks - 0099493624; Behold, Here's Poison - 0099493640; They Found Him Dead - 0099493632; A Blunt Instrument - 0099493659
September 2006
Envious Casca - 0099493667; Detection Unlimited - 0099493748; Duplicate Death - 0099493756; No Wind of Blame - 0099493675
January 2007
Penhallow - 0099493683; Footsteps in the Dark - 0099493691; Why Shoot a Butler? - 0099493721; The Unfinished Clue - 009949373X
Title: Penhallow
Author: Georgette Heyer
ISBN: 9780099493686
Binding:
Publisher: Cornerstone
Publication Date: 2007-01-04
Number of Pages: 448
Weight: 0.2995 kg
Praise for Georgette Heyer's mystery novels:
'We had better start ranking Heyer alongside such incomparable whodunit authors as Christie, Marsh, Tey and Allingham' * San Francisco Chronicle *
'Rarely have we seen humour and mystery so perfectly blended' * New York Times *
'Sharp, clear and witty' * The New Yorker *
'Heyer's characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me ... I have seldom met people to whom I have taken so violent a fancy from the word Go ' * Dorothy L. Sayers *