At the start of Raichev’s stylish third novel to feature mystery writer Antonia Darcy and her husband, Maj. Hugh Payne (after 2007’s The Death of Corrine
), the couple attend a literary festival in Hay-on-Wye. There they reluctantly befriend two unusual women—a femme fatale in a wheelchair, Beatrice “Bee” Ardleigh, and Bee’s austere companion, Ingrid Delmar—whom Hugh dubs “Goldilocks and Cerberus.” A few months later, Antonia and Hugh accept Bee’s invitation to come see her in Oxfordshire, where Bee has just made a controversial marriage and Ingrid has been impersonating Bee on visits to a dying neighbor who plans to leave his home, Ospreys (“The secret house of death they used to call it”), to the National Trust. The twisty plot thickens with the murder of a shady, Chartreuse-drinking priest at Ospreys. Deft use of literary allusion and well-drawn if unsubtle characterization are among the strengths of this traditional whodunit. (Apr.)
