From Publishers Weekly
In her seventh Jemima Shore ( Oxford Blood ) novel, Fraser deftly brings together her two previously separate fortes, history and mystery. In an unusual premise, long-dead viscount and Cavalier poet Decimus Meredith repeatedly exits his portrait on the wall to haunt his 20th-century heirs. The contemporary viscount, suave and manipulative ladies' man and tennis star "Handsome Dan" Meredith, has unconventional visions about keeping up expensive Lackland Court. Dan would model its grounds into very different kinds of courts, where he and his fashionable friends would serve tennis balls and be served "designer drinks" between matches. Shore, a TV commentator, agrees to create a program about ghosts in country houses at the same time that she falls in love with a portrait she has been lent, which, coincidentally, features Decimus Meredith. Meanwhile, preparations for a costumed Cavalier Celebration at Lackland Court are upset by a death, a startling discovery and an attack by the resident ghost. Jemima's clearheaded sleuthing sorts out the many suspects, some of whom fit historical roles in the family history. Fraser's own love of history enriches this light, amusingly narrated but essentially sad story of a family haunted by betrayal and obsessed with a poetic past.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-- Jemima Shore, an intrepid television journalist and amateur sleuth, starts out to research a ghost story and wanders into a murder investigation among the bluebloods of British society in this gripping, fast-moving mystery. The victims: the alcoholic 17th Viscount Lackland and his elderly butler, both killed in mysterious falls; the suspect: the 300-year-old ghost of the first Viscount Lackland, killed in battle in 1645. The next possible victim is the handsome 18th Viscount Lackland, a man surrounded by beautiful women and perhaps one malevolent ghost. Readers will appreciate this combination mystery, ghost story, and romance set in contemporary England but harkening back to the past.
- Richard Lisker, Fairfax Public Library, VACopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
