The Company She Kept [Hardcover]

Marjorie Eccles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1996

An anonymous letter about a long-ago murder that hints about ancient sacrificial rites makes Gil Mayo wonder if Angie Robinson's murder had been a random crime or part of an overall larger plot, leading him to suspect an eccentric former archaelogist, Kitty Wilbraham.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his fifth case (following Late of This Parish, 1994), British Detective Chief Inspector Gil Mayo explores questions of moral, ethical and intellectual responsibility. A cryptic, anonymous letter intimating at evil doings in the past, including murder, arrives at Mayo's CID room shortly before the body of a strangled woman is found on the moor. As Mayo investigates, readers learn of a 1978 gathering at a remote country house called Flowerdew. Owned by Kitty Wilbraham, the elderly widow of a prominent archeologist, Flowerdew was at the center of a group of young people: Kitty's secretary; a handyman; Kitty's doctor, Madeleine Freeman, and Madeleine's lifelong friend, Angie Robinson; a young man about to go up to Oxford; and the daughter of one of Professor Wilbraham's colleagues. All seemed happy together until a sudden violent death one night dispersed them. The silence they agreed at that time to maintain is ended when the Oxford student, now a businessman, receives a manuscript of a novel depicting that night's events, which are also referred to in the letter to the police. Then the dead woman is identified as Angie Robinson. Mayo and readers piece together gradually revealed bits of information connecting both murders. Rich with complex characters and insights, this tale offers the added pleasure of Mayo's new sergeant, Abigail Moon, an intelligent, attractive young woman who knows the value of humor and common sense.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fourteen years after a fateful Ouija experiment among ancient archeologist Kitty Wilbraham's household, two more communications awaken unquiet spirits once again. The first, a manuscript entitled The Carthage Affair, sends Felix Darbell, the former gardener's helper once in love with Kitty's exquisite, indifferent new secretary Sophie Amhurst, into a panic, since it's obviously written by one of the few people who knows the whole story of his involvement in that night. The second, an anonymous letter that begins, ``The night she died Dido came,'' and concludes, ``She would not have died if she had stayed away from England,'' points more delphically back to the past--but far more definitely to the immediate future, when its author, Women's Hospital receptionist Angie Robinson, is found strangled in a lonely lay-by. Eccles juggles her parsimonious cast of suspects- -Kitty's former physician Dr. Madeleine Freeman, Angie's patron and only friend; smallholder Maryon Thomas, who bought his farm from Kitty; and the beauteous Sophie--so deftly that they seem to fill the whole world; you'll be hard-pressed to beat Chief Inspector Gil Mayo's forces to the punch in laying hands on the guilty party. Eccles's fourth (Late of This Parish, 1994, etc.) hops dexterously between the mysterious past and the violent present, though at some cost to the lightly sketched Lavenstock CID. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312142978
• ISBN-13: 978-0312142971
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,771,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a pleasant little English mystery, October 31, 2011

By 

Booker G "ultimate reader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Company She Kept (Hardcover)

"The Company She Kept" is another pleasant little English mystery from Eccles, who tends to write relatively short books with reasonably tight plots. In this book murder comes with a creepy old house containing scary Tunisian artifacts, an eccentric old lady archaeologist, and an odd set of hangers-on that at one time made up the archaeologist's social set. The hangers-on turn out to be the suspects in the current case, and Eccles does a good job of making them out-of-the-ordinary characters who fill out the story well. My only gripe with the book is that the plotting by the killer seems overly elaborate, and it is unlikely the killer could have actually brought about the complicated plan.

As for the regular cast, Mayo remains a strong character though not fully developed like lead detectives in the books of Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, or Caroline Graham. In "The Company She Kept" we see less of Detective-Sergeant Kite, which is too bad, and instead are introduced to and see a great deal of Abigail Moon, a new sergeant in the squad. In my opinion Moon is added to the Eccles' books simply because it has become important for a woman to be added to detective squads--all the mystery writers end up doing it! Moon offers no unique characteristics that make her a good addition as far as this book goes.

This was an enjoyable book for me, and I can recommend it to lovers of English mysteries.