From Publishers Weekly
Feminist Glynis Tryon (The Stalking Horse, etc.), is back in a new addition to the Seneca Falls historical series. As beautiful as the typical Victorian heroine, she's also a great deal more independent and effective. In the spring of 1861, while the rest of the country is wrapped up in the Civil War's opening volleys, the residents of the small city in upstate New York are more worked up over a local murder. Wealthy businessman Roland Brant has been found dead in his home. Thinking a woman's touch would be helpful in interviewing the family, the police constable, long besotted with Tryon, asks for her help. She finds plenty of possibilities, including an invalid wife and two problematic sonsAone hostile and the other drunk. But what intrigues her most is the kitchen maidAyoung, pretty and muteAwho vanished the day of the murder. Could she have had something to do with the crime? Monfredo spins a clever, suspenseful tale that involves gun-smuggling and sexual abuse. She's at her best pulling plot twists out of actual events. Her research is evident on every page. She falters, however, when it comes to characterization: some of her players seem to exist only to make a historical point. Others have unlikely 20th-century attitudes (one conversation about gun control is absurdly anachronistic) that keep the period from snapping to life. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
As the Civil War begins in 1861, Glynis Tryon, Seneca Falls, New York, librarian and amateur sleuth, meets a woman seeking her lost daughter. Meanwhile, Glynis' cousin Emma fears losing her independence in marriage, and a rich Seneca Falls merchant is brutally murdered. When the lost girl becomes the prime suspect in the merchant's murder, Glynis joins forces with her niece, treasury agent Bronwen Llyr, and Constable Cullen Stuart to find the real killer. In this fifth Glynis Tryon novel, Monfredo, a former research librarian, continues to develop an engaging cast of characters. Overcoming a sluggish opening, the story features a hard-to-solve mystery, some suspenseful courtroom scenes, intriguing Civil War background, and engaging cameo appearances by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Readers of historical mysteries set in the nineteenth-century U.S.--Gillian Linscott's series starring suffragist Nell Bray, among others--are sure to like this one.
John Rowen
