Customer Reviews

Face Down Beside St. Anne's Well (Lady Appleton Mysteries)

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#9 Lady Susanna Appleton historical mystery set in Elizabethan England with all its political intrigues. Rosamond, Susanna's 12-year-old foster daughter (the child of one of her dead husband's mistresses) involves Susanna in an investigation involving the death of her French tutor at St. Anne's Well. It's been declared an accident, but Rosamond is sure she was murdered, so Susanna and her housekeeper Jennet are off to supposedly take the baths at nearby Buxton while looking into things. What they discover is a whole nest of plotters to put Mary Stuart back on the throne--but was Madame Poitier's death related to that, or to something personal?

This was a fairly typical entry in this series, an easy light read, good period detail and a relatively interesting story. However, I have to say that this series has really lost its shine for me. I absolutely loved the first few, but depsite the fact that I recognize that it's a decent book, I found that it felt like work getting through it. Not really sure why, perhaps it's the lack of Susanna's character development as the series has gone on--she seems to have become much less interesting than she was early on in the series.

I do know that I'm glad I got this one from the library rather than spending much effort tracking it down myself and spending money on it. I'm not sure if I will bother with the last one in the series or not.

Amazon sells this book for just over $11 new. Just search on the title and you'll find it. For some reason, this entry doesn't show the ISBN numbers, and Amazon's "add to description" feature doesn't let you add it. Attempts to put the URL for the better price into the "reference URL" section also failed.