Down the Garden Path: A Pastoral Mystery - Hardcover

Cannell, Dorothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312218699 ISBN 13: 9780312218690

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1985

Synopsis

Young Tessa Fields, an "ex-orphan" bent on discovering her true parentage, devises a scheme involving both phony amnesia and an intrusion on the hospitality of two elderly ladies who may hold the key to the riddle of her origins

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Cannell's second mystery boasts the effects that made her The Thin Woman a delicious debut. Brimful of surprises, the story related by Tessa Fields gives off whiffs of Restoration comedies, except for the sobering moment when a murder abruptly halts the fun. Until then, the reader is delighted to let the author lead on "down the garden path," where Tessa thinks she's leading her hostesses, elderly Primrose and Hyacinth Tramwell. In collusion with her beloved, Harry Harkness, Tessa pretends amnesia in hopes that the sisters will let her rest in the Cloisters, the Tramwell estate since the days of Henry VIII. Tessa believes the mansion holds the secret of her birth, possibly as the illegitimate infant of an absent Tramwell relation. The young woman's snooping is complicated by her hostesses' butler (named Butler) and housemaid Chantal, an intellectual gypsy. At a neighbors' soiree, Hyacinth and Primrose reveal themselves as card sharks, bringing a good friend of Tessa's to the Cloisters to remonstrate with them. Tessa's suspicions of the sisters seem valid when someone strangles the man and she learns that they have been only pretending to believe in her masquerade. The killing, an unfortunate and unnecessary plot departure, is no real deterrent to enjoying an otherwise robust tale of intrigue and true love. December 26
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0312218699
• ISBN 13: 9780312218690
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312