Death Comes to Kurland Hall

October 5, 2015
Lloyd’s overly complicated third Regency mystery (after 2014’s Death Comes to London) finds amateur sleuths Lucy Harrington and Maj. Robert Kurland returning from London to Kurland St. Mary, where Lucy’s father, the local rector, is about to preside over the wedding of a friend of Lucy’s. Rector Harrington’s surprise announcement that he plans to marry widow Maria Chingford, a blackmailer who sells secrets to the London newspapers, sets Lucy devising ways to prevent the match. When Mrs. Chingford’s body is found at the bottom of a staircase, almost everyone, including Lucy herself, is a suspect. Then Emily Fairfax, the stepmother of Robert’s new estate manager, is found dead near a letter confessing that she killed Mrs. Chingford. As Lucy and Robert, unconvinced, probe the two linked deaths, they must clarify their feelings for each other as well as a web of other subterfuges. Though implausibilities mar the plotting, the protagonists’ romantic power struggles are as appealing as ever. Agent: Deirdre Knight, Knight Agency.

September 15, 2015
A squabbling pair of Regency sleuths is presented with a complicated case. Shortly after they solved a murder while visiting London (Death Comes to London, 2014), Maj. Sir Robert Kurland asked Lucy Harrington for her hand in marriage. She refused him, and now the two are barely speaking. But they're forced to deal with each other once more because Sir Robert has offered his home for use as a venue and guesthouse for Lucy's friend Sophia's wedding to a friend of his. When a nasty gossip is found dead at the bottom of a staircase in his home, both Sir Robert and Lucy are suspicious of the circumstances. Sir Robert had been briefly engaged to the murdered woman's daughter, Penelope Chingford, whose main concern after her mother's death is how she and her sisters will survive. There is also some mystery about the late Mrs. Chingford's relationship to the widowed Emily Fairfax, who's asked Sir Robert's manager, Thomas Fairfax, her husband's illegitimate son, to return home and manage the estate for her own young son. The field of suspects is rich because Mrs. Chingford's snooping and sharp tongue earned her many enemies. Sir Robert and the decidedly independent Lucy investigate together until he alienates her with his overprotective ways. Even then, neither is ready to give up, and they continue to hunt for clues. A saucy tale of love and murder, Regency style.

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December 1, 2015

Lucy Harrington returns to Kurland St. Mary to help with her friend Sophie's wedding. Maj. Robert Kurland still wants Lucy to marry him after his bungled proposal, and the widowed Mrs. Chingford has designs on the village rector, Lucy's father. When Mrs. Chingford dies under suspicious circumstances, Lucy and Robert suspect the wedding party. The third in this charming Regency series (Death Comes to London; Death Comes to the Village) has a darker side.

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