Face Down Beneath the Eleanor Cross

Susanna, Lady Appleton (Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie), grieves over the supposed death of her husband but then receives a message to meet him. When he fails to appear and is then found dead, Susanna stands accused of his murder. For series followers and fans of Elizabethan mysteries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Emerson has the place names and customs right in this Elizabethan whodunnit set in 1565, but too often her lords and ladies and various commoners, despite the occasional archaism ("certes," "mayhap"), sound and act like stock characters in a modern crime melodrama. Somebody lures Lady Susanna Appleton (returning from Face Down Among the Winchester Geese) to a shady London tavern for a rendezvous with her estranged husband, Sir Robert Appleton. When Sir Robert doesn't appear, Susanna leaves. Shortly thereafter he falls dead at her feet, beneath one of London's landmarks, the Eleanor Cross. Well known as an herbalist and healer, Susanna is arrested for his murder, since witnesses claim to have seen her poison his food at the tavern earlier that day. That Eleanor has no motive is, oddly, never an issue. (This kind and educated woman had no illusions about Sir Robert's low character during her arranged marriage.) After a spell in Newgate prison, Susanna is released and sets out to find the real killer before she's tried and, if convicted, burned at the stake. The prime suspects are Sir Robert's several mistresses, whom Eleanor spends the next few months visiting throughout England. Everyone assembles back in London for her trial, where in improbable, Perry Mason fashion Susanna provokes her husband's murderer into making what amounts to a confession in front of judge and jury. While the killer's identity is far from predictable, sophisticated readers won't much care about it, as the author fails to give her characters sufficient depth against the historical backdrop. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The strong-minded and strong-willed heroine of Emerson's Elizabethan mystery series, Susanna, Lady Appleton, does not miss her wayward husband, Robert, lost and presumed dead. When she gets a message from him in cipher, though, she doesn't hesitate to meet him, only to find him, poisoned and dying for real, beneath London's Eleanor Cross at Charing and King. When Susanna is accused of Robert's murder, she undertakes a dangerous winter journey across England, meeting with each of her husband's mistresses in the hope of ferreting out the truth. Susanna saves herself and exposes the villain only at the last moment in a wild courtroom finale. Emerson grows more confident in each of these stories, enriching them with details of daily life, the miseries of travel, the uses of herbs, and the horrors of the English penal and justice systems as they existed in 1565. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Although her era's ominous intrigues are everywhere evident, Elizabeth I appears only offstage in Lady Susanna Appleton's fourth adventure (Face Down Among the Winchester Geese, 1999, etc.), which begins in 1565 as Elizabeth's favorite, Robin Dudley, fingers herbalist Susanna as the culprit who poisoned her late husband. The unlamented Robert Appleton turns out to be more mischievous than any self-respecting corpse, posthumously summoning Susanna to meet him in Winchester via coded messageits code based, in Emersons sly joke, on John Knox's misogynist Monstrous Regiment of Women. Indeed, as copies of the book keep popping up, more women, mostly Robert's former mistresses, become likely suspects in his murder. Could one of them have turned deadly, or are Robert's political connections more likely? Vulnerable as Elizabeth's heir, Lady Mary Grey has cause to hate him. Annabel MacReynolds, a spy for French regent Catherine de Medici, has tricked Robert with her body and knows the Knox code. Then Susanna's ally Sir Walter Pendennis, his loyalty already compromised by his new inamorata Eleanor Lowell, is distracted by his rivalry with lawyer Matthew Grimshaw for Susannas friendship. Usually confident and competent, Susanna is a less dynamic figure under threat of trial and murder herself; but she has mentored both her superstitious housekeeper, Jennet, and Robert's surprising sister, Catherine, well in previous adventures. Faithful friends track the past until Susanna, in a final cozy gathering, unmasks the obvious villain. Despite a mystery that eventually turns messy and some cumbersome period detail, Emerson gets a star for high drama and the graceful planting of background information. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.