A Place of Confinement

Starred review from June 24, 2013
In Dean’s highly entertaining fourth Regency mystery featuring 30-ish spinster Dido Kent (after 2012’s A Woman of Consequence), Dido bristles at serving as companion to her Aunt Manners during the latter’s visit to Charcombe Manor, which she finds to be “not a house at ease with itself.” One reason for the underlying tension is the disappearance two days earlier of 19-year-old Letitia Verney, who was under the care of Dido’s host, Lancelot Fenstanton. Letitia was last seen with a young man of dubious reputation, Tom Lomax, who just happens to be the son of the man Dido is in love with. Tom insists that he not only walked Letitia back to the manor but watched her enter, despite the testimony of those in the house at the time that Letitia never came through the door. The solution to that impossibility is as clever as the rest of the plot. Agent: David Marshall, Marshall Rights.