Puss Reboots: Blog: December 2022: Manor of Dying

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Along the Saltwise Sea by A. Deborah Baker
The Biograph Girl by William J. Mann Break the Chains by Megan E. O'Keefe
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The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Leviathan by Jason Shiga
The Liminal Zone by Junji Ito
Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape) by Carrie Jones
Manor of Dying by Kathleen Bridge and Vanessa Daniels (Narrator)
Murder by the Book by Lauren Elliott and Karen White (Narrator)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie and Hugh Fraser (Narrator)
On This Airplane by Lourdes Heuer and Sara Palacios (Illustrations)
The Orphan and the Mouse by Martha Freeman and David McPhail (Illustrations)
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Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim and Annie Q (Narrator)
The Templeton Twins Have an Idea by Ellis Weiner and Jeremy Holmes (Illustrator)
Tumble by Celia C. Pérez
Unseen Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

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November 2022 Summary

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Manor of Dying: 12/11/22

Manor of Dying by Kathleen Bridge and Vanessa Daniels (Narrator) (2019) is the fourth book in the Hamptons Home and Garden mystery series. Meg Barrett and Elle Warner have been hired to inventory a remote mansion's furniture to see what can be used for an upcoming made for TV movie. A blizzard strands them in the house's old elevator. When they're finally able to exit it, they find one of the owners dead in the basement.

With a murder in a remote location during a freak snow storm, I expected this mystery to be a locked room type mystery. To my relief, it wasn't. The weather is a factor in the timing of events but not to the point of forcing all or the majority of the action to happen in one location.

Like the previous books, this mystery is a two parter. There's the murder during the time when the house was a sanatorium. Then there's the modern day murder of a relative of the doctors who ran the place. The past as recreated through things Meg reminds me of The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward (1946). The modern day one, is even more sinister.

The nuts and bolts of the modern day mystery is pretty straightforward. There's only so many possible people who could have done it. Despite that, it was a compelling read.

Five stars