Eccles, best known for her cozy police procedurals (Untimely Graves
, etc.), delivers a stellar stand-alone, a novel of suspense set in post-WWII Britain that harks back to the early 20th century. In 1946, when Harriet Jardine receives a cardboard box of letters and notebooks found during the demolition and remodeling of Charnley, her family's former country house, she knows that she and her two sisters will have to face memories they would rather leave alone—in particular, their mother's disappearance decades earlier after an elaborate birthday party. Determined to seek out the truth, Harriet and her sisters act on one clue to their mother's fate by organizing a trip to Egypt, but when a mummified body turns up in the walls of Charnley, Harriet looks for answers closer to home. In lyrical prose, Eccles contrasts the world of Edwardian society, with its frivolous fashions and its prescribed manners and mores, with the devastating changes wrought by two world wars. Fine characterizations and an absorbing plot will please not just fans of Eccles's Supt. Gil Mayo series. (Jan.)
