Death at the Sign of the Rook

In his sixth adventure (after Big Sky), ex-detective Jackson Brodie and his police friend D.C. Reggie Chase find themselves attending a murder mystery night in the rundown estate-cum hotel, Burton Makepeace House. It started when the twin children of recently deceased Dorothy Padgett hired Brodie to track down a missing Renaissance-era painting that belonged to Dorothy and was purportedly stolen by her caregiver. Research revealed a similar crime, the theft of a Turner owned by Lady Milton, had been committed at Burton Makepeace several years earlier—a crime investigated by Chase. Thus, on a cold night, Brodie and Chase knock on the door to interview Lady Milton only to find a murder mystery night in progress. Add a blizzard, a vicar, an army veteran with a prosthetic leg, an escaped murderer, a dowager whose mind wanders, a corpse in the walk-in freezer, an inept acting troupe, and heirs looking to cash in before and after their parents’ deaths and the result is a farcical mystery that will rope in readers immediately.