Smoke Screen - Softcover

Marianne Macdonald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340748338 ISBN 13: 9780340748336

Publisher: New English Library, 1999

Synopsis

Dido Hoare, thirtysomething antiquarian bookseller, thinks she is on to a good deal when she is asked by the ex-lover of a famous poet to take care of the sale of her collection. But then things start to go wrong: the house burns down, Dido is accused of theft, and a murder occurs.

About this title

About the Author:

Marianne Macdonald was born in Canada and lived there until she was twenty, when she went to Oxford to do graduate work. She has lived in England ever since, pursuing an academic career until her retirement to concentrate on writing and acting. Smoke Screen is her third mystery featuring the adventures of antiquarian bookseller Dido; there is a fourth in the offing.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A friend warns Dido Hoare, antiquarian bookseller and sometime sleuth (Ghost Walk, 1998, etc.) that the woman he refers to as Her Majesty means trouble. Dido can see the point. There's something, well, prohibitive about the large, sixtyish female who looks like ``a battleship under sail.'' Her name is Clare Templeton, and though she might indeed mean trouble, she also might mean major business for Dido. Tumbling from the shelves in her shambles of a house is an avalanche of books rare (and valuable) enough to set Dido's entrepreneurial spirits soaring. That, however, is just part of the temptation. Soon she learns that Clarea much trimmer craft in her timewas once the lover of the late Orrin Forbes, famous American poet, and that his personal papers have been left in Clares keeping. But who's their rightful owner? Is it Clare, or her daughter, with whom she seems in a permanent state of internecine warfare? When Prof. Jay Roslin, the studly Forbes expert, offers to share his knowledge and his bed, Dido suddenly faces an even headier form of temptation. But then homicide claims Clare; a certain manuscript turns up in Dido's possession; and she finds herself ruefully recalling her friend's warningwhile trying to stare down a gimlet-eyed Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. Dido's third puzzle isn't really all that much, but what there is she solves charmingly. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: New English Library
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0340748338
• ISBN 13: 9780340748336
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256