Face Down Across the Western Sea [Hardcover]

Kathy Lynn Emerson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2002

Anxious to prove England's claim on the New World, Queen Elizabeth has charged Sir Walter Pendennis, seasoned spy and diplomat, with the top-secret mission. Walter gathers a team of scholars at his Cornwall estate, and calls upon his dear friend Susanna, Lady Appleton, to assist. Susanna is an expert herbalist with a quick mind and wise ways-and Walter has long carried a flame for her.

When Walter's wife appears uninvited at Priory House, she sets about extinguishing that flame. Meanwhile, Susanna and Walter find that troubling discrepancies have surfaced among sailors' accounts of the land beyond the Western Sea. Their research becomes intrigue when an eyewitness account turns up missing and a scholar is found dead in his study. Is the murder the work of an academic rival? A jealous lover? A Spanish spy?

Scholarly trickery and New World scandal come to light as Susanna's sleuthing skills are put to the test.

Face Down Across the Western Sea is a potent concoction, brimming with the qualities that have made the Susanna, Lady Appleton, series a favorite among mystery lovers: rich period detail, first-rate suspense, and at the center of it all, Susanna-a headstrong and beguiling heroine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Have all the years that Susanna, Lady Appleton spent experimenting with poison herbs unleashed an evil that could account for all the dead bodies she encounters? No, Kathy Lynn Emerson's latest, Face Down Across the Sea, doesn't contain any element of the supernatural: instead it features a wealth of minuscule period details (which will be familiar to fans of the series); a group of 16th-century scholars attempting to discern England's rights to the New World; and the strong-minded heroine's investigations into a crucial missing transcript and murderer's motives.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Herbalist Susanna assists scholars privately investigating England's claim on the New World. When part of their information goes missing and one of the scholars is murdered, Susanna goes into action. The seventh volume in Emerson's popular series, this is a sturdy and entertaining historical; for fans of Elizabethan mysteries.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (April 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312288239
• ISBN-13: 978-0312288235
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,416,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb Elizabethan mystery, March 23, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: Face Down Across the Western Sea (Hardcover)

Sir Walter Pendennis is at Priory House in Cornwall on a mission for the queen. With him is Susanna, Lady Appleton, the woman who turned down his marriage proposal s well as a host of England's best scholars. Their job is to find England's claim, if any, to the New World and a faster waterway to the Asian Markets. Susanna is glad to find something worthwhile to occupy her time since her lover Nick Baldwin, a member of the Merchant's Adventures, is in Hamburg to advance England's cause in that port.

When one of the scholars explains to Susanna that one of the documents is missing, she intends to help him look for it. She is distracted from her mission when Sir Walter's estranged wife arrives on the scene causing emotional turmoil. In the meantime, the scholar who lost the document has been killed and Sir Walter and Susanna must find out who did it since England's interests are involved in the matter. When a second scholar disappears and is presumed dead, Susanna is determined to find out what is going on.

Every Susanna, Lady Appleton novel is a joy to read. In an era when a powerful queen ruled England, a widowed noblewoman has much power, especially if she has enough money to back up her desires. Susanna is a person of sterling character who wants to make the world a better place. That is why readers love her and the plot of her latest tale, FACE DOWN ACROSS THE WESTERN SEA, enhances her desire to leave a positive mark while also enhancing the reputation of author Kathy Lynn Emerson

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good characters and history, June 21, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: Face Down Across the Western Sea (Hardcover)

The Spanish have pulled untold wealth from the Americas and have prevented the English from doing the same. In response, Queen Elizabeth has tasked Susanna, Lady Appleton and her friend Sir Walter Pendennis to lead a research team to discover some valid English claim to have discovered the Americas before Columbus. The pickings seem slim, but when one of the researchers is murdered, Susanna wonders whether the Spanish have discovered their mission--and have taken steps to prevent success.

Susanna and Walter investigate the unlikely suspects--a small group of aging scholars from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Yet what possible motives would they have for murder, and why would any of them be interested in supporting the Spanish claims? Still, there is definitely something going on beneath the surface--one of the scholars has been sneaking out of the manor at night and another has a daughter who has ended up in places a young and single woman shouldn't go.

Author Kathy Lynn Emerson writes convincingly about this critical period in English history. Elizabeth holds the crown but is surrounded by enemies abroad and by Catholic and extreme protestant enemies at home. Emerson personalizes the mystery making both Susanna and Walter fully developed characters with conflicted desires and motivations that go far beyond simply solving a crime.

Unfortunately for the novel, Susanna and Walter's personal lives are more interesting than, and not especially connected to the mystery itself. Indeed, the solution to the mystery comes as something of an anticlimax, not resolving the fundamental issues or advancing the personal goals of either primary character. FACE DOWN ACROSS THE WESTERN SEA is a pleasant read and contains intriguing history and historical speculation. Pretty good.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good soap opera, poor mystery!, December 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Face Down Across the Western Sea (Hardcover)

If you can swallow the idea of an Elizabethan research team and accept the fact that his book deals much more with marital difficulties than murder, then you might--I repeat, might--enjoy this book, but it is definitely not as good as previous offerings in this series. Either Ms. Emerson is running out of ideas, or she's cranking them out to make money...in either case, the reader ultimately suffers.