Saint's Rest - Hardcover

Miles, Keith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802733328 ISBN 13: 9780802733320

Publisher: Walker & Co, 1999

Synopsis

While the Great Depression has tightened its grip on the world, there are still some who have money to fulfill all their dreams. One of these men is Hobart St. John, who wants a sixteen-room mansion in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. For young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on the house is the answer to a prayer. That the assignment should have gone to a senior member of the firm gives Richards a moment's pause, but it's not enough to stop him.
Neither do the questions: How did the prime site open up so conveniently? What happened to the house that had been there? Why did the small company where he works get the job?
And why was the body, which he finds hanging from a rafter on the site, described in a brief news mention as that of a drifter who committed suicide? Clearly, the man had been well-groomed and expensively dressed, and just as clearly, his hands had been tied behind his back. Just how does one manage to commit suicide that way?
His dream assignment is fast becoming a nightmare, and Merlin Richards realizes all too quickly that the answers he wants might cost him his life.

About this title

Reviews

Merlin Richards, Welsh architect and Frank Lloyd Wright prot?g?, makes a strong return in his second adventure, following Murder in Perspective. Rugged, good-looking and somewhat na?ve, Merlin is grateful to find a Depression-era job at the Chicago firm of Westlake & Davisson. When he's offered the plum assignment of designing a mansion in Wright's old stomping ground of Oak Park, also known as Saint's Rest, he's thrilled. But like Wright's projects there, Merlin's is beset by difficulties. First, there's the interoffice jealousy his commission causes. Then there's the client, meat baron Hobart St. John, and his demanding wife, Alicia. St. John's ruthless aide, Donald Kruger, and his assistant, Clare Brovik, whose role is unclear but whose beauty is unmistakable, add another layer of trouble. Finally, there's the corpse that Merlin and Clare discover on the building site. Finding the body is bad enough, but Merlin is confounded when the police try to pass off an obvious murder as suicide. His attempts to get explanations lead to warnings and threats. Miles roots his novel in a fine period atmosphere that contrasts the lives of capricious haves and struggling have-nots. Though the ending is predictable, the romantic woes of his affable protagonist keep the pace pleasantly brisk. (July) FYI: Miles also writes under the pseudonym Edward Marston (see The Wanton Angel, reviewed below).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Welsh architect Merlin Richards has left Frank Lloyd Wright's side in Phoenix (Murder in Perspective, 1997), but his idol is very much on his mind as he toils away on the new home he's been asked to design for Chicago meat-packing king Hobart St. John and his wife Alicia Martinez, a Hollywood hussy who wants the place compounded of details from Pola Negri's and every other house on Sunset Boulevard. Besides forcing Merlin into prodigies of diplomacy, the big new commission is also driving a wedge between him and his ladylove, commercial artist Sally Fiske, who's trying to weather the Depression as a hotel clerk. And it's not doing much for his reputation among Reed Cutler and Victor Goldblatt, the senior associates at Westlake and Davisson, who feel that they've been unfairly passed over in favor of the firm's junior partner just because he worked with the great dinosaur Wright. But none of these omens prepares Merlin for the sight that greets him and St. John's attractive underling, Clare Brovik, when they take a midnight tour of the building site and discover that someone's christened the wine cellar with the hanged body of a stranger. The police call the death a suicide, but even Merlin, a man not noted for skepticism or subtlety, can't help wondering how many suicides tie their hands and knock themselves on the head before death. Clearly, decent Merlin's gotten himself in with some serious bad guys, though in the absence of the charismatic Wright, it hardly matters which of them killed the unknown and then purchased such a conspiracy of silence. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Welsh architect Merlin Richards, now associated with a 1930s Chicago firm, receives the golden opportunity to design a house in prestigious Oak Park. Unfortunately, he discovers a murder victim on site and wonders at the subsequent cover-up. Following Murder in Perspective (LJ 2/1/97), this is the second in a captivating new series from the author also known as Edward Marston.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802733328
• ISBN 13: 9780802733320
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224