Danger at Darkmoor Park (The Audacious Sisterhood of Smoke & Fire)
It’s Christmas 1852, and Selena’s patroness is hosting a house party in the stately home that houses her girls’ school. Guests known and not-so-well-known from a seaside vacation four years before gather as the snow piles up. Then the charming Mr. Clarke is found at the bottom of the stairs, dead. A doctor happens to have stepped down from the train in the village, and he is called in to pronounce. Only Selena has heard Clarke’s last words: something is hidden “under the dragon,” and little by little it appears that the dead man has concealed a huge sum of money he was carrying to restore to a hospital building fund his partner had tried to steal. Of all the guests, only the doctor seems to be uninvolved with Clarke’s past, so Selena enlists his aid to investigate. Then another guest dies, and our two investigators receive threatening messages. The little group is trapped by the snow, facing a killer who may be out to murder them all.
If you like classic closed-room Victorian mysteries and steamy genre romances, you’ll gorge as happily on this novel as on a rich Christmas pudding. The pace is fast, the red herrings numerous, and the ending properly satisfying. Recommended, except for mystery-lovers who may not want to dilute their pleasure with romance.
