Blood on the Wood (Nell Bray Mystery) [Hardcover]

Gillian Linscott (Author)

Book Description

Series: Nell Bray Mystery | Publication Date: May 1, 2004

When the suffragette movement is bequeathed a valuable painting by campaigner Philomena Venn, suffragette and amateur sleuth Nell Bray agrees to retrieve it. The plan is simple: Collect the picture from Philomena's widower, Oliver, take it to Christie's, and sell it to raise much-needed funds. But Nell is in for a surprise when she returns from the Vennes' home in the Cotswolds: The painting he has given her is a fake!
When Oliver refuses to hand over the real painting, his son, political activist Daniel Venn, suggests an alternative plan to Nell: Why doesn't she break into the house and switch the paintings? Against her better judgment she agrees, and in the process she uncovers a far more serious crime---a brutal murder in which she is now personally embroiled. . . .
Once again, Gillian Linscott guides her delightfully starchy heroine through the politics, personalities, and perils of early twentieth-century England.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Linscott's solid historical series (Dead Man Riding, etc.) seldom portrays English suffragette Nell Bray breaking the law, even when the law is wrong, but at the start of this nifty tale of love, deceit and socialism, Nell finds herself explaining to a constable that she entered wealthy widower Oliver Venn's country house in the middle of the night "to steal a picture." She just so happened to stumble on a corpse while doing so. The late Philomena Venn bequeathed to the Women's Social and Political Union a valuable French painting, a less famous version of Boucher's La Blonde Odalisque at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. She also left a bereaved husband, a niece who makes and sells handcrafted furniture and a nephew who collects and preserves folk music, in addition to a legacy of socialist activism involving a Fabian splinter group, the Scipians. When Bray's initial foray to claim the Odalisque musters only a forgery, she must return to sort things out and ends up trying to aid a man engaged to two women simultaneously. The author's adept characterizations and understated use of the mores, customs, fads and manners of early 20th-century Britain make for an engrossing combination. Add to that a murder that appears both cruel and senseless, a suitably suspenseful chase and a highly satisfactory denouement, and one has another first-rate entertainment.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Intrepid British suffragette Nell Bray has her hands full when she accepts what seems to be a straightforward assignment. A wealthy benefactor has bequeathed a valuable French painting to the suffragettes, and Nell must claim it and bring it back to London. She heads for the Venn estate in the Cotswolds, which turns out to be a kind of socialist summer camp. After she obtains the painting and takes it to Christies for auction, however, she learns that it is a copy recently commissioned by the bereaved widower. Then, when he refuses to part with the original, Nell decides to break into the house and switch paintings. Doing so lands her in the middle of a murder investigation. Readers will soak up fascinating detail about the Fabians, the Scipians, and the Arts and Crafts Movement while following the action in this delightful romp through England at the turn of the century. The eleventh Nell Bray adventure finds the feisty heroine in top form. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312331487
• ISBN-13: 978-0312331481
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,182,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming early 20th century-set mystery, June 17, 2004

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Blood on the Wood (Nell Bray Mystery) (Hardcover)

It started with a painting. When a dying suffragette leaves a painting to the 'movement,' activist Nell Bray is sent down to the Cotswolds in rural England to pick it up. The suffragette's family tries to foist off a counterfeit and Nell end up cast into an adventure that starts with a plot to steal the real painting--and ends up with broken engagements and murder. Everyone in the Venn family seems to be hiding something. At first, Nell is willing to believe that they are simply trying to protect the fiancee--but could their motives be darker? Could her revolutionary acquaintance, Harry Hawthorne be right that the family was willing to kill to protect their property--and kill again if necessary?

Set in the early twentieth century when woman's suffrage is still a distant hope, when revolutionary socialists are filled with hope for the worker's utopia, and when women still need to be concerned about their social standing and their chances of being 'ruined,' BLOOD ON THE WOOD is a strangely powerful mystery. Nell Bray is an entertainingly complex character--hard-working for suffrage but realistic enough to know that it will take time and compromise. Her moral dilemma over how much to tell the police rings true. Author Gillian Linscott does a fine job depicting those turbulant times and the characters who lived through them. The suspects--song-hunting dilitante, Daniel; widower Oliver; jilted fiancee Felicia; and too-clever lawyer Adam are all worth looking at--all have motives, all could have benefitted through murder.

If you're looking for a cerebrial mystery with a charming early-twentieth century setting, BLOOD ON THE WOOD is a can't miss opportunity. I enjoyed this one a lot.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This sufragette sleuth outdoes herself, May 23, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Wood (Nell Bray Mystery) (Hardcover)

Linscott's spirited suffragette, Nell Bray, finds herself explaining to the police how she discovered a body in the course of a midnight robbery as this latest mystery of murder and politics in early 1900s Britain gets underway.

It all happened because a valuable painting, bequeathed to the Women's Social and Political Union, turned out to be a fake - commissioned after its owner's death by her husband, Oliver Venn. So, when a splinter group of the Fabians - the Scipians -gathers to camp at the Venn's, Nell decides to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, by sounding out the Scipians' commitment to women's suffrage while confronting Venn about the painting.

It's the younger Venn son, Daniel, a collector of folk music, who comes up with the plan that Nell should steal the picture that's rightfully hers. Daniel has also just got himself engaged to a silent, abused member of the agrarian classes, no matter that he's already engaged to quite a nice woman of his own sort. It's the downtrodden waif who turns up dead during Nell's quasi-sanctioned theft.

The historical detail, from ladies' fashions to radical politics, merges unobtrusively with the mystery through the likable and entertaining voice of the intrepid Nell. Her sleuthing skills emerge naturally from her forthright personality, as do her well-reasoned forays into the woods in the dead of night after a killer. A delightful series.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engaging historical mystery, April 29, 2004

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Wood (Nell Bray Mystery) (Hardcover)

Suffragette Philomena Venn donates to the Women's Social and Political Union a valuable painting by renowned French artist Boucher in her will. Member Nell Bray goes to collect the painting so that the group can sell it for a needed influx of cash. When she receives a forgery from the deceased's family and the widower refuses to do the right thing by his wife, Nell takes it upon herself to steal the real one and replace it with the fake.

Breaking and entering Mr. Venn's house in the middle of the night proves rather easy. However, the switch is deferred when Nell finds a corpse. Someone murdered the victim and as Nell explains to the constable why she was in the house, she vows to herself to uncover the identity of the culprit so can clear her name.

BLOOD ON THE WOOD is an engaging historical mystery that brings to life the early struggles of the suffragette movement in England. The fine amateur sleuth theme is cleverly enhanced by unpretentious looks at early twentieth century society mostly by the extended Venn family, suffragette sisters, or the heroine. Nell as the center of the tale is the real deal so that the audience obtains a wonderful novel that showcases a bygone period in a delightful way as does the previous Bray books do (see DEAD MAN RIDING and PERFECT DAUGHTER).

Harriet Klausner