The Cuckoo's Child

May 30, 2011
Laura Harcourt, the plucky 21-year-old heroine of this solid stand-alone set in 1909 from British veteran Eccles (Last Nocturne), has sought her independence from her wealthy family by serving in a refuge for destitute women in London's East End. After realizing that such work is not for her, Laura accepts a position in Wainthorpe, a small Yorkshire town, to catalogue books in a 16th-century manor house owned by Ainsley Beaumont, who runs a large mill in the area. On arrival, Laura is shaken to see that a wing of the house destroyed in a fire years before remains "an empty fire-blackened shell." Later, when a man's body surfaces in the water near the mill dam, signs of blunt force trauma to the head suggest foul play. The killer's identity will surprise more than a few readers, but the book's main strength lies in the author's gift for describing people and scenery.

June 15, 2011

The paterfamilias passes away, 1909.

Wealthy mill owner Ainsley Beaumont succumbs to his fate after falling into the Cross Ings Mill dam, helped along by a stout cosh with a stone. The obvious suspects are his bad-tempered, widowed daughter-in-law Amelia and her twins Gideon, who's eager to modernize the mill and improve its working conditions, and Una, who's determined to follow Mrs. Pankhurst's example and liberate women. But it would be premature to rule out Beaumont's partners at cards, Whiteley Hirst, the mill manager saddled by debt, and Dr. Widdop, who knows many of the secrets of the local Yorkshire women. And of course there is the surprise inheritor of £15,000: Laura Harcourt, who had been in Beaumont's employ organizing his library for only a week. Is the death connected to the fire 20 years back that gutted one wing of Beaumont's home and killed his son? Does it have to do with a missive stashed away on a high shelf in his library explaining the plight of Benjamin Kindersley and Lucie Picard, one long gone, the other dead soon after childbirth? Laura's meeting with handsome engineer Tom Illingworth on the moor brings Jane Eyre to mind. But there are enough marital infidelities and scandalous births, suffragette pamphleteering and trade union speeches to invoke a whole shelf of period fiction.

Eccles (The Shape of Sand, 2005, etc.) so overstuffs her plot that one can only pity the poor inspector who must wade through all this pother on the eve of his retirement.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011
Laura Harcourt is at loose ends after a stint at a women's shelter in the slums of East London, so when she receives an offer to travel to the Yorkshire village of Wainthorpe and catalog wealthy mill owner Ainsley Beaumont's library, she decides to accept. When she arrives, she finds the entire Beaumont family mysterious and unwelcoming. The one bright note is handsome Tom Illingworth, a longtime friend of the Beaumonts, to whom Laura is instantly attracted. It's a shock when, soon after Laura arrives, Ainsley Beaumont is murdered. A further shock awaits. When Beaumont's will is read, Laura learns that Ainsley has left her 15,000. Why would a man she had just met leave her money? Laura realizes that Wainthorpe and the Beaumonts have many dark secrets, but she's determined to get at the truth. Set in early-twentieth-century Britain, Eccles' latest enjoyably blends historical romance and suspenseful murder mystery in a keep-'em-guessing plot with revealing insights into English society at the time and authentic period ambience. Entertaining reading for fans of British historicals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)