Review by Booklist Review
On the eve of the return of Halley's Comet in 1910, Stephen Pike arrives as a footman of a Cornish island manor. He was just released from a two-year prison sentence for a crime he claims he didn't commit and is immediately employed, his luck turning around. On the heels of his arrival, the viscount is in a tizzy, believing the world will end with the comet's visit, and orders the servants to seal every window and door. To the delight of the other servants and Stephen's dismay, he is charged with staying with Miss Decima Stockingham, the cantankerous and ornery matriarch, in a separate wing for the imminent apocalypse. Everyone makes it through the night unscathed, except for the viscount. He is found deceased in his locked study. With his recent prison stint, Stephen finds himself in hot water as the mostly likely suspect. Miss Decima becomes an invaluable partner and sleuth to help find the true killer. Fans of quintessential British murder mysteries will be delighted to read Montgomery's work.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Children's bestseller Montgomery (I Am Rebel) pivots to adult fiction with this entertaining locked-room whodunit set in 1910 England. After ex-convict Stephen Pike is hired as a footman at Tithe Hall, a grand estate on a tidal island near Cornwall, he discovers that the estate's eccentric owner, Viscount Stockingham-Welt, believes the world is coming to an end with the arrival of Halley's Comet. In preparation, he insists on boarding up the house and sequestering everyone in their rooms. However, the viscount's tough, scientific-minded great aunt Decima demands that Stephen defy his new boss and escort her outside to view the comet. The next morning, the viscount is found dead with an arrow through his eye. A humorously inept Scotland Yard inspector arrives to investigate and, without proof, immediately assumes Stephen is guilty. Police scrutiny on Stephen escalates when the inspector is found bludgeoned to death with a marble bust. Fortunately, Stephen has the loyalty and brains of Aunt Decima on his side, and the two join forces to clear his name. With an unorthodox detective duo, lively prose, and a plot full of invigorating twists, this strong series opener will leave readers eager for more. Agent: Peter Knapp, Park, Fine & Brower. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A vainglorious viscount is murdered in this 1910-set mystery--Montgomery's first novel for adults and the launch of the Stockingham & Pike series. As the novel opens, narrator Stephen Pike, not yet 20 years old and fresh from a two-year stint at a London prison, finds himself in Cornwall at World's End, taking a job as a second footman at a remote manor house. (So far, soDownton Abbey.) He arrives at a time of high anxiety: Lord Stockingham-Welt has seen to it that the windows of Tithe Hall have been boarded up in anticipation of Comet Halley's appearance--"This time, it will be the end of the world," he insists. The comet spares the earth, but the night doesn't spare the viscount: The next morning, he's found dead in his study, which was locked from the inside, with an ancestral crossbow's bolt in his eye. Who better than un-alibied recent inmate Stephen to take the blame for the murder? To Stephen's aid comes Miss Decima Stockingham, the viscount's elderly great-aunt, who makesDownton Abbey's Violet Crawley seem like an earth mother. A frustrated scientist, Miss Decima hated her late nephew--"Conrad stole my inheritance, my sister, my career…everything"--but she hates Stephen's victimization more. The book's ingenious reveal, which hinges on a long-buried Stockingham family secret, is reached through a combination of Miss Decima's scientific-inquiry-fueled deductions and Stephen's precocious puzzling (the story features both a hedge maze and a spot-the-difference-style brainteaser). The odd-couple intergenerational sleuthing duo is a welcome new arrival on the historical-mystery scene, with Stephen's squeamishness about Miss Decima's filterless fuming a mainstay of the book's unremitting humor (Stephen: "I'd never heard language like it…and I'd just spent the last month sharing a bunk with a man called Filthy Mick"). A paragon of the locked-room historical mystery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
