Death Called to the Bar: A Murder Mystery featuring Lord Francis Powerscourt - Hardcover

Dickinson, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786716967 ISBN 13: 9780786716968

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 2006

Synopsis

In February 1902, a feast is held at the Inns of Court, during which senior barrister Alexander Dauntsey collapses and dies. When a second barrister is shot dead shortly after, Lord Francis Powerscourt is summoned to conduct a discreet investigation. His inquiries take him to the heart of legal London, where the wills of the dead can reveal the crimes of the living, and he discovers a troubled marriage, seemingly broken by the lack of children. The trail leads on, first to a grand country house, mysteriously boarded up, its past sealed within, then to a growing list of suspects including a jealous wife, a mistress fearful of being jilted, and a cuckolded husband who writes books about poisons. Powerscourt eventually finds that he too is now standing in the path of danger.

About this title

About the Author

With an honours degree in Classics from Cambridge, David Dickinson joined the BBC, where he became editor of Newsnight and Panorama as well as series editor on Monarchy, a three-part programme on British royal family.

From Publishers Weekly

In Dickinson's well-written fifth historical set in turn-of-the-20th-century Britain (after 2005's Death of a Chancellor), Lord Francis Powerscourt investigates the death of a junior "bencher," Alexander Dauntsey, who falls face down into his soup at a formal dinner held at one of London's Inns of Court ("a trickle of blood ran down his chin to join the beetroot broth, Borscht Sanguinaire rather than Borscht Romanov"). When the other benchers close ranks, Powerscourt must rely on the inn's lesser lights and his extensive roster of in-laws for leads. His questions reveal a number of people who may have had a motive for poisoning Dauntsey, but few with the opportunity. While Dickinson may not provide enough clues for the reader to unravel the mystery behind Dauntsey's murder, the rich cultural background (e.g., lively commentary on what is still a superlative art collection, the Wallace, as well as on a stately home that resembles Knole, the seat of the Sackville-Wests) will please Anglophiles. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0786716967
• ISBN 13: 9780786716968
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 247