Canaletto and the Case of the Westminster Bridge - Hardcover

Laurence, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312185510 ISBN 13: 9780312185510

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 1998

Synopsis

In this first installment of a new series, the creator of fictional sleuth Darina Lisle introduces famed Italian artist Canaletto who, while traveling through England, finds himself eating dinner with Jane Austen, as well as discovering he has a talent for detective work.

About this title

About the Author:

Janet Laurence had her first three books published in the same year 1989. One of them was a guide to good food in Somerset, another a cookery book, THE LITTLE BOOK OF FRENCH COOKERY, which she has seen all over the world, and the third was the first in her culinary crime series featuring Darina Lisle, cordon bleu cook. ‘I wanted to write a series of crime books; a cook can go anywhere and meet anyone, including corpses,’ she says. ‘And food was something I knew about.’ At the time she was the cookery correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and ran courses from her Somerset home. Since then she has published sixteen crime novels: ten in the Darina Lisle Series, each featuring a different aspect of the food world; three in the mid-eighteenth century Canaletto series, and two in her new historical series, set in the first years of the twentieth century and featuring an the American Ursula Grandison working together with an ex-Metropolitan detective, Thomas Jackman: A DEADLY INHERITANCE, and A FATAL FREEDOM. She is currently working on the third. There is also a stand-alone suspense novel, TO KILL THE PAST. She is one of the contributors to THE SINKING ADMIRAL, a collaborative crime novel by fourteen members of The Detection Club published in 2016, and is the author of WRITING CRIME FICTION – Making Crime Pay. She has also published three contemporary women’s fiction under a pseudonym, Julia Lisle, and has ghost written a series of romantic novels. A number of crime short stories have been published in various anthologies, of which COME TO TEA was short listed for an Agatha Award. A paper on publishing in the Golden Age of Crime Fiction was published in A-Z ... GOES CLASSIC, published in the US. Janet has presented papers on crime writing to a number of International Conferences, Symposia and Seminars. She has served as chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and is a member of The Detection Club. She was included in The Times ‘100 Masters of Crime’ and has been a Writer in Residence and Visiting Fellow at Jane Franklin College at the University of Tasmania. She runs a number of crime writing courses and also produces editorial assessments for unpublished scripts. She is currently Chair of the Judging Panel for the CWA International Dagger and a member of the Society of Authors’ Management Committee.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A striking departure for Laurence, author of a series featuring English food-writer Darina Lisle (Death at the Table, 1997 etc.). The scene is 18th-century London, and the sleuth is the real-life Canaletto, famed Venetian painter now visiting the city with hopes for new commissions, perhaps scenes of the still unfinished Westminster Bridge. He has arrived by ship, carrying his considerable fortune, and within minutes is nearly killed by villain Jack Scallion. Canalettos life is saved, though, by young Fanny Rooker, who takes him to the house she shares with engraver brother Ned and his vindictive, pregnant wife Lucy. Alternating with Canalettos story is a chronicle of the proposed marriage between Viscount Richard Purbeck, son of the near- impoverished Marquess of Brecon, and Charlotte, daughter of rich merchant Balthaser More, with Richards secretary James Bennett acting as go-between. The Marquess has his own romantic idyllwith beautiful adventuress Anne Montesqui, whose half- brother Patrick Granville has another role to play. The jailing of Fanny Rooker on trumped-up charges and the bargain Canaletto strikes to effect her release, along with a couple of killings and numerous complications, some based on past events in Venice, produce a web of avarice and lust that Canaletto manages to untangle. Leisurely and literate, if a bit overextended: a tale to gladden the hearts of historical romance lovers, providing adequate fare for puzzle fans as well. Nicely done. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0312185510
• ISBN 13: 9780312185510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 393