Dripping with scandal and delicious mystery, the fourth instalment in Edwards’ pitch-perfect Golden Age of Crime series presents Rachel Savernake with the curious case of the apparent suicide of a surrealist artist.
Rachel Savernake faces her most puzzling murder yet in this glamorous gothic mystery from the winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger.
'This is my challenge for you,' the woman in white said. 'I want you to solve my murder.'
London, 1930s: Rachel Savernake has been invited to a private view of an art exhibition at a fashionable gallery. The artist, Damaris Gethin, known as 'the Queen of Surrealism', is debuting a show featuring live models pretending to be waxworks of famous killers. Before her welcoming speech, Damaris asks a haunting favour of the amateur sleuth: she wants Rachel to solve her murder. As Damaris takes to a stage set with a guillotine, the lights go out. There is a cry and the blade falls. Damaris has executed herself.
While Rachel questions why Damaris would take her own life - and just what she meant by 'solve my murder' - fellow party guest Jacob Flint is chasing a lead on a glamorous socialite with a sordid background. As their paths merge, this case of false identities, blackmail, and fedora-adorned doppelgangers, will descend upon a grand home on Sepulchre Street, where nothing - and no one - is quite what it seems.