Unexpected fun!

I wonder that we haven't heard more of Anna Green! This is a gloriously old-fashioned story, melodramatic and stagey. Some of the coincidences were a little too improbable, and some of the plot twists you could see coming, but nonetheless this was a comfortable and absorbing tale as the winds battered my windows this last week!
Gabrielle de Cuire is on point narrating as the brisk and sharp-eyed Inn-keeper. I found myself lost in this unjustifiably overlooked mystery!
One thing that did sound an 'off' note: it is difficult for anyone of my generation or younger to hear the way characters speak of African-American servants in the same way you might speak of faithful horses or dogs. Of course the book was written in the late 1800s, and set still earlier in the late 1700s so it's certainly historically accurate, and on balance I do not believe in editing the past just to suit present tastes. It's not a prominent part of the story, but still, yikes!
But for melodrama this story is up there with Daphne Du Maurier, and Wilkie Collins, and makes shameless escapism.

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