The Secret of the Three Fates picks up a few months after the first in the series, The Curse of Penryth Hall, in October of 1922. This one probably works as a stand alone, but you'll have a much better feel for the characters and appreciate what we learn about their backgrounds here.
This time around, Mr. Owen and Ruby are at a remote manor house in Scotland, supposedly to purchase illuminated manuscripts. Mr. Owen, however, has lied to Ruby and the two of them are actually there to attend a séance- Mr. Owen is hoping to speak to his son, Ben, who died in the War. The séance, hosted by three mediums going by the name of The Three Fates, is frighteningly real. One of the mediums, seemingly possessed by a spirit, delivers an ominous message:
There’s nowhere on earth you can hide from the dead. We have not forgotten … we shall not forgive. The dead know what...
I love catching a new series at the beginning and Haunting and Homicide is a fun read and a good introduction to Tallulah “Lou” Thatcher and her family and friends, both living and dead. Lou lives with her grandmother in New Orleans and has a business doing ghost tours which makes perfect sense since she has been able to see and talk to ghosts since she was little. When a rival ghost tour guide dies Lou is unfortunate enough to stumble across his body. But now he's a ghost who begs her to make sure the police find out who killed him. She wants to help and she wants to clear her own name - she found the body, they were clearly not friends, and the murder weapon came from her store.
The mystery is well-written with several twists and surprises. This is Lou's first outing as an amateur sleuth and she's not great at it yet, but she does...
I do love a good Poirot mystery and this one is interesting because each of our potential suspects gets to tell their story exactly as they remember it.
Poirot is asked by a young woman to solve the murder of her father, Amyas, a famous painter who was killed 16 years ago. Although her mother, Caroline, was tried, convicted, and died in prison, she left her daughter a note claiming she was innocent. Poirot agrees to look into it and happily, the five other people at the house at the time are all still alive. Poirot visits each of them and asks them to write down how they remember the events of that time. They all oblige. Through those accounts, we learn more about Caroline and Amyas Crale, but also about everyone else concerned. Everyone sees the others just a bit differently and layers and layers are added to the timeline and the characters, some obvious, others surprising. We do...
