From Publishers Weekly
Investment banker and amateur sleuth Mark Treasure makes his 14th appearance in this uncharacteristically tedious tale. Asked to serve as a trustee for a convent in England's West Country, Treasure soon learns that all but one of the shareholders on the board support dissolution of the 11 million assets of the convent, where only three nuns reside. The demanding historical and legal intricacies of the trust overshadow a mugging that fells the convent's elderly organist, which is followed by a suspicious fire that destroys the convent. When one of nuns, who has been printing copies of rare colonial British stamps, dies, Treasure must discover who was supplying her with ink and motivation. The trust remains a red herring, the scent of which grows stronger when the one hold-out shareholder is murdered. Unfortunately none of the players warrants great suspicion, so the resolution unfolds with little power. Williams's earlier exploration of troubled churches, Holy Treasure! , was more successful.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
This time out, merchant banker Mark Treasure (Prescription for Murder, p. 218, etc.) and his lively actress wife, Molly, are visiting Chiversley, where she is appearing in a film and where he has been asked by a bishop friend to become one of the three ``Convent beneficiaries'' of the Society of Blessed Mary Magdalene at Saint Timothy's Church to find a replacement for the murdered church organist. Should he vote to close the convent, which is down to its last three, exceedingly geriatric, nuns? Another convent beneficiary is murdered; arson claims the life of a nun, who, unknowingly, was creating stamp forgeries in the convent print shop; and the Utteridge Brewery fortune, which funds the convent, has several disagreeing claimants, each with plans of their own for spending the money, some noble, some in pursuit of the canon's man- trap niece Christine, a former model now scarred from a car mishap. With a painstaking look around, Treasure vanquishes an ironclad alibi and ties the forgeries to the murders and to the fate of the convent. The nuns are endearing, but the alibi that depends on an identity switch is pretty stock stuff. Still, there's enough of interest here to charm puzzle fans. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
