Marilyn's Mystery Reads

When Frances, Emily, and Rose decide to visit Madame Peony Lane’s fortune teller’s tent, it seems like a lark.  The woman is so cheesy, so stereotypical with her tasteless silk turban and phony raspy voice, that no one could take her predictions seriously.  No one, that is, except Frances Adams.

Frances is overwhelmed by the fortune she’s told, namely, that “all signs point to your murder.”  It’s certainly not a pleasant forecast, and the impact it has on the teenager is hard to overstate.  She spends her entire life looking for and finding scary meanings in the most ordinary things, and when she dies, years later, the prediction appears to have come true.

Half a century after that fateful day, her great-niece Annie Adams receives a letter from Walter Gordon, a solicitor in the small town where Frances spent her entire life.  He informs her that she will be the sole beneficiary of Frances’ estate and assets after the latter’s death and that she needs to meet with her elderly great-aunt as soon as possible.  Annie is stunned by the news of her eventual inheritance, especially since she has never met Frances, and she travels to the Dorset village to discuss the will and its implications.

Once there, she’s introduced to Gordon and the other interested parties–Elva, Frances’ niece by marriage; Saxon, Elva’s son; and Oliver, the solicitor’s son.  Although the original missive from Gordon said he and Annie would be meeting Frances at his office, he now says Frances has changed her mind and wants the group, minus Saxon, who will join them later, to meet at Gravesend Hall, the Adamses’ ancestral home.  When the four of them arrive, they find Great-Aunt Frances’ corpse on the library floor.

Using the familiar trope of an unexpected inheritance, a small town, and a group of people related to or close to the deceased, Kristen Ferrin has created a wonderfully original mystery.  As Frances’ entire life has revolved around the fortune teller’s cryptic words, there is a great deal for the police to discover and for Annie to try to understand.  What was meant by the psychic’s pronouncements that “Your future contains dry bones…Beware the bird…for it will betray you…there’s no coming back…daughters are the key to justice”?

As Annie extends her stay in the village and becomes more familiar with its inhabitants, she becomes aware that people are hiding a great many secrets, some of which go back in time to the day at the fair when Frances heard the prediction that will rule her life.

Kristen Ferrin has written an engaging, unique mystery with a cast of characters reminiscent of those featured in novels of the Golden Age but with a modern twist and a resourceful heroine.  It’s a book that is a delight from start to finish.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels