Hushed in Death

by Stephen Kelly

Overview

In the spring of 1942, with the war in Europe raging, a gruesome murder shocks the rural community of Marbury, where a once-grand estate called Ellicott House has been transformed into a hospital for “shell-shocked” officers sent back from the front lines. When Detective Chief Inspector Lamb arrives to solve the case, he quickly learns that the victim, Ellicott House’s gardener Joseph Lee, had plenty of enemies in Marbury—and so he and his team have plenty of suspects. Along with his team of investigators, which includes his daughter Vera, Lamb begins to untangle the threads of rivalry and deceit that lie beneath the surface of the seemingly-peaceful countryside village. It soon becomes clear that Lee’s mysterious past is intertwined with the history of Ellicott House itself, which fell into disrepair a generation earlier after a shockingly similar murder, and the mystery deepens further when Lamb discovers that one of the prime suspects has seemingly committed suicide.As Lamb pieces together the connections between the crimes of the present and those of the past, he must dive into the darkest, most secret corners of Ellicott House to discover who is committing murder, and why.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681779331
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Series:	Inspector Lamb Series , #3
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	349 KB

About the Author

Stephen Kelly is an award-winning writer, reporter, editor and newspaper columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post and Baltimore Magazine. He has a Master of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and has taught writing and journalism at Hopkins, Towson University, in Baltimore, and Sweet Briar College, in Virginia. He lives in Columbia, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

09/10/2018
Kelly’s solid, if unspectacular, third whodunit set in England during WWII (after 2016’s The Wages of Desire) opens with the body of Joseph Lee, the gardener at Elton House, a mansion turned into a treatment facility for traumatized war veterans, floating in a pond. Det. Chief Insp. Thomas Lamb, aided by his grown daughter, Vera, who serves as his driver, goes through the usual routine of having the Elton House staff interviewed, including Frederick Hornby, the facility director, and Janet Lockhart, a volunteer who found the body and who believes that she can help people reconnect with deceased loved ones. The inquiry takes a new path after Lamb learns that the pond was the setting for a murder committed during WWI. Lord Henry Elton was poisoned by his wife, Catherine, who placed him in the water to make the death appear to be an accidental drowning. Kelly plays fair with the reader, and despite a bit of silliness at the end, this will appeal to fans of Rennie Airth and Charles Todd. Agent: Joelle Delbourgo, Joelle Delbourgo Assoc. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Kelly fantastically recreates the claustrophobic mood of England under siege with period details.

Cleveland Plain Dealer [Praise for the Inspector Lamb Mystery Series]

A satisfying whodunnit. A well-crafted historical mystery with characters which highly resemble a classic Agatha Christie novel. Kelly’s atmospheric portrait of Marbury makes this a refreshing read for both fans of historical and cozy mystery novels

Mystery Tribune

Readers will be caught up in the mystery of Elton House as Inspector Lamb weaves together the complicated strands of an often-surprising story to uncover the truth.

Criminal Element

I most enjoyed the novel’s eccentric characters, from the séance-sharing widow to the unsuccessful playwright and his pet ball python.

Historical Novels Review

Don't we all occasionally long for an old-fashioned country mystery with a tricky plot and an eccentric cast of characters?

Marilyn Stasio

A deftly crafted read from cover to cover and showcases author Stephen Kelly's impressive mastery of the genre.

Midwest Book Review

2018-08-21

The third sedate appearance of the Hampshire Constabulary's DCI Thomas Lamb continues Kelly's project to show that beneath the veneer of village courtesies, British life in 1942 was a good deal more fraught than you might suspect.

And that's even before the Luftwaffe bombers return, as they briefly do late in the game, to absolutely no effect. Long before then, Kelly has already marked out the real conflict down below as pitching some denizens of The Elton House Sanitorium for invalided ex-servicemen against the staff, the citizens of nearby Marbury, and each other. The low-intensity flashpoint is the discovery of Elton House gardener/handyman Joseph Lee's body floating in the pond. Sanitorium volunteer Janet Lockhart, who found Lee's body, and Lt. James Travers, the convalescent she first alerted, agree that no one much liked Lee. But only one person quarreled with him and knocked him down on the night he died: wealthy, rakish painter Alan Fox, who says he was defending himself from Lee even though it seems more likely that he was defending the reputation of Theresa Hitchens, the local publican's daughter, whose reputation, it turns out, could use defenders. Aided by a crew that includes DS David Wallace, who was seriously wounded in Lamb's last case (The Wages of Desire, 2016), and his driver and daughter, Vera Lamb, whose not-so-secret relationship with Wallace makes her especially sympathetic to the pressures on Theresa Hitchens, Lamb uncovers unsavory links to not one but two earlier murders involving Lord Henry Elton, whose estate the sanitorium now occupies, and Lady Catherine Elton, the wife once tried for killing him.

A slow-burning blast from the past that reminds you that the sins of the fathers were already an inheritance from their own parents. Next time, let's hope Kelly's hero doesn't feel the need to keep reminding everyone, "I was on the Somme…for an entire bloody year."

Kirkus Reviews