Showing results for "Picture" in Women Sleuths

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.

1929: Miss Clara Vale is a woman ahead of her time. Rather than attending Oxford to bag an eligible Duke (as her mother, Lady Vale, so desperately hoped), she threw herself into a degree in chemistry, with aspirations to become a scientist in her own right. But the world isn't ready for Clara. Unable to land a job in science because she's a woman, she is stuck behind the desk at a dingy London library. Until her estranged Uncle dies suddenly, leaving her his private detective agency, and laboratory, in his will.

Velma is charm itself, especially when she's being inexact with the truth. Now she wants Bea, widowed owner of the Abbot Agency, to check up on her stepson Philip - he's somehow acquired a valuable picture last seen in the flat of an elderly lady who's been murdered. Maggie, Bea's assistant, moves into a flat in Philip's building, to investigate. However, Rafael a professional art thief who aims never to leave his victims alive, is also after the picture.

As the owner of Coffee, Books, and More, Jill Gardner likes to support other Main Street businesses, so she attends a paint-and-sip event where, sadly, her brushstrokes look more like blobs. It's still fun, though - aside from some disruption by a couple doing more sipping than painting. Jill's police-detective boyfriend is on alert, but a designated driver volunteers to take the drunken pair back to their bed and breakfast, and everything seems resolved. Until the wife's body turns up the next morning back in the studio.

When police detective Chad Detweiler's estranged wife is found shot to death with bullets from his revolver, the proud papa-to-be finds himself up the creek without a lawyer. The dead woman's family immediately points the finger at the detective. An exhausted Kiki does all she can to be supportive. After all, the dead woman was a drug addict! But when Detweiler's family makes a request that Kiki can't honor without breaking a promise, a solemn oath to her daughter, Kiki puts her foot down.

When a local artist disappears under mysterious circumstances, Chief Fox enlists my help to solve the case. An inspection of the artist's most recent paintings reveals there's magic at work, and I have to get in touch with my inner Rembrandt in order to access it. Meanwhile, life takes a sharp turn for frenemy Sassy Persimmons, and I find myself in the unexpected position of offering her comfort while offering my evil family a piece of my mind.

Her son's friend is missing, and the police refuse to help – soon, Rhona MacLeod is on the trail of a sinister killer. Picture Her Dead is the eighth novel in Lin Anderson's forensic crime series. 'One of the most satisfying characters in modern crime fiction' – Daily Mail When art student...