Cavalier Case, The - Softcover

Fraser, Antonia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553295446 ISBN 13: 9780553295443

Publisher: Crimeline, 1992

Synopsis

When "Handsome Dan" Meredith plans to convert his stately Elizabethan mansion into an exclusive country club, his family, including Decimus Meredith--the ghost of the dashing, seventeenth century Cavalier poet, soldier, and viscount--has strong objections. Reprint. PW. NYT. K.

About this title

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, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crimeline
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0553295446
• ISBN 13: 9780553295443
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256