From Publishers Weekly
Set in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1575, the 10th entry in Emerson's Elizabethan historical series (
Face Down Under the Wych Elm, etc.) smoothly mixes engaging characters, political intrigue, period customs and crime. Rosamond Appleton, the impetuous 12-year-old foster daughter of Susanna, Lady Appleton, is horrified when she learns that her French tutor, Madame Louise Poitier, has drowned face down in St. Anne's Well. Unable to accept the crowner's ruling of accidental death, Rosamond calls on Lady Appleton to investigate. Conspiracies and murders surrounding the imprisonment of Mary Stuart, the abdicated queen of Scots, complicate the process, but Lady Appleton and her friend and housekeeper, Jennet Jaffrey, as ever rise to the occasion. Those readers who need help keeping the characters straight can refer to a list at the front. There's also a glossary of unfamiliar Elizabethan words.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Susanna, Lady Appleton, herbalist extraordinaire and amateur detective, returns in an all-new mystery fraught with plenty of sixteenth-century intrigue. When her stepdaughter's French tutor drowns in the soothing waters of one of Buxton's renowned naturally heated baths, Susanna is compelled to investigate. With the help of the precocious 12-year-old Rosamund Applegate and her ever-faithful housekeeper and friend Jennet Jaffrey, Lady Appleton unravels a tangled web of passion, deceit, and possible treason. As usual, the twisted affairs of state provide a colorful backdrop for Susanna's machinations, as Tudors and Stuarts vie for both political and religious power and control. Like Edward Marston in his Nicholas Bracewell series, Emerson steeps her period whodunits thoroughly in Elizabethan-era manners, language, and historical detail.
Margaret FlanaganCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved