A Pinchbeck Bride

March 15, 2011

The death of a docent in a Back Bay Boston brownstone.

Newly named a trustee at Mingo House, improv comic and amateur historian Mark Winslow accompanies docent Genevieve Courson as she explains the museum's history, including ghostly sightings, Civil War armament dealings and the tragic death of family triplets with compromised lungs. Later she asks to meet with him privately. But when he arrives, Genevieve, in a green period gown complete with bustle, has been posed in an heirloom rocker, strangled. Whodunit, and why? Mark's lover Roberto wishes he wouldn't get involved, but since he discovered the body, Mark can't help being curious. Then an aged trustee falls into a coma, an antiques appraiser hired to evaluate the Mingo House contents is murdered and another trustee is learned to have formed a romantic liaison with yet another, despite marriage and his presumed sexual orientation. And there's more. At the time of her death, Genevieve was pregnant, her college roommate didn't bother to show up for her funeral and her best friend was known to several of the trustees for his role in a porno film. So Mark thinks he has lots to tell the police, who have their eye on Genevieve's father, a registered sex offender, as their main suspect. Matters won't come to a head till after the last crab cake has been eaten at the museum fundraiser and Mark, in self-preservation, whacks the guilty party with a fireplace poker conveniently at hand.

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March 15, 2011
Bostons historic Mingo House holds unnerving rumors about the family ancestry and hints of hidden, centuries-old ecclesiastical silver, as new trustee Mark Winslow, the gay stand-up comic Anable introduced in The Fisher Boy (2008), learns from college student and docent Genevieve Courson. When he finds Genevieves strangled body in a Victorian ball gown seated at the dining table, the house also becomes a crime scene. With the Victorian girl murder creating a public stir, Genevieve is found to have been pregnant, with paternity claimed by appraiser Bryce Rossi, who, in the midst of assessing the contents of Mingo House, is found bludgeoned to death in his home. An aura of foreboding descends on the house, and its future as a museum seems questionable. Winslow prowls among Genevieves friends and the other trustees for clues to the murders. The relative lack of character development makes it difficult to sympathize fully with many of the people in the story, but Anable fashions a well-crafted, fast-moving plot, including a well-placed red herring that diverts Winslow and the police.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)