- Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Reprint edition (28 Jan 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140230661
- ISBN-13: 978-0140230666
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,644,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
The descendants of Charles Mortimer, the Collards and the Vandervents, share two mansions on Blackheath. Despite their wealth and position, they are a family cursed by bad luck from which no generation is exempt. Roger Vandervent, the manager of the family business, dies from food poisoning.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Symonds creates a setting, populates it with a rich crew of characters and then doesn't do very much with it. The plot is servicable enough - though it's a tad obvious who did it - but the characters don't develop beyond the stereotypical. When each of them has played their part in the mechanics of the mystery then they disappear. Sometimes this is literally (dead or moved away) and sometimes this is figuratively (they never appear in the foreground again); it's hard to tell which is the clunkier method of getting rid of them.
I also wasn't convinced by the accuracy of the very late Victorian setting - for example there is an anachronistic appearance of Perrier water - no matter how many footnotes are used to explain how the legal procedures of the time differed from today. Real Victorian novelists simply ignored such niceties as the letter of the law when they didn't fit the grand sweep of their narrative(e.g. the punishment handed out to Fagin in Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics) by Dickens).
I also wasn't convinced by the accuracy of the very late Victorian setting - for example there is an anachronistic appearance of Perrier water - no matter how many footnotes are used to explain how the legal procedures of the time differed from today. Real Victorian novelists simply ignored such niceties as the letter of the law when they didn't fit the grand sweep of their narrative(e.g. the punishment handed out to Fagin in Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics) by Dickens).
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
EXCELLENT VICTORIAN MYSTERY
16 July 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
After the first fourth of the book when you are introduced to the main characters this story picks up momentum. The story moves along with a clear vision of the time and place with brief descriptions of interior design and clothing of the day. This book is indeed a whodunnit and is very well plotted. You will probably catch on to who the dastardly doer is, but the fun is still there and a little twist at the very end will satisfy the most hard core lover of this genre.
I am hard to please and I loved the book. It is an oldie but a goodie.
I am hard to please and I loved the book. It is an oldie but a goodie.
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