Crime and Thrillers
In a landscape where medieval kings used to hunt, lime trees cast thankful shadows on a hot June day, an actress strolls around practising her lines and the ‘Earl of Clarendon’ public house offers sanctuary, fine fare and just a hint of deviousness, Alba White is staying at Kingsbourne Manor as a guest of Dr John Sunday.
It sounded idyllic when she had been invited but now she is here, the reality is anything but idyllic; because the other guests, as well as the villagers themselves, have taken none too kindly to Dr John’s wealth nor his new flame.
As Alba’s stay at Kingsbourne Manor progresses from the straightforward unwelcome, to the unpleasant and finally, most dramatically, to disaster, she wishes she had never come. Indeed, her journey to the house had almost been trying to tell her to stay away. Yet, she had come and it falls to Alba to hunt out the truth as to what has happened.
But is the truth, ultimately, what Alba should have been searching for?
Here's what readers have to say about this book....
Conjuring up a country house setting that grows in familiarity and reality with every page, Martin Hurcomb peoples it with a set of characters who explode with self-interested life and conflicting interests. An inexplicable death at this mansion of the family her friend Eleanor hopes to marry into leads Alba White every which way, as she traces her doubts and suspicions among family, villagers and publicans in her quest for truth and some kind of justice.