Customer Reviews

Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie: An Elizabethan Mystery (Elizabethan Mysteries)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Set in Elizabethan England, author Kathy Emerson has chosen an interesting historical period for her mystery series and an intriguing heroine in Susanna, Lady Appleton -- a proto-feminist educated by her father and grudgingly admired by her more conventional husband. Emerson introduces a great deal of information about the times, the people and the herbs without making it painful, and the book is readable for that alone. The heroine and other characters are believable and three-dimensional and the murder and its solution are reasonably well-done -- better than many historical mysteries. I look forward to reading others in the series.

I'm no expert on Elizabethan England, but this book seemed well researched, almost to a fault. It did tend towards exposition in spots, but I can forgive that for the sake of learning some history. The juxtaposition of headstrong, educated Lady Appleton in this vivid setting made for a highly entertaining read.

Some of the foreshadowing was a bit blatant, and I thought the villain was pretty obvious. (Hint: In Chapter 4, pay attention to what is so carefully *not* revealed about the murderer.) But I had a great time following along, and the ending had some unexpected little twists. I look forward to more of Susanna's adventures.

This is an immensely readable, enjoyable book. The characters are great, the story kept my interest, and the historical background is accurate and is inserted into the story in engaging ways. I have been reading a lot of historical mysteries this summer, and this is an excellent one! Good summer reading!

Fun romp through another time period. Lady Appleton, married to a womanizing prigg, spends her time solving murder cases. She's an only child, which was the cause for her unusal education (for a girl that is). i. e. She was the son her father never had. She not overly attractive either, which is a break from the norm. Luckly, she's got brains out the wazo and her husband is often away from home (being a spy and all) so it's up to Lady Appleton to save the day.

I know this all sounds common place, but the author pulls it off with outstanding wit and dry humor. She also does a wonderful job of bring the Elizabethian time period true to life. You won't be disappointed.

First Sentence: Steam rose from the marrow-bone pie until the old man's sharp beak of a nose wrinkled in delight.

Sir Robert Appleton is off to France on a mission for Queen Elizabeth. A letter he receives, shortly before his trip, tells of the death of John Bexwith, steward of Appleton Manor in Lancashire. As Bexwith was not old and was found dead face down in a marrow-bone pie, Lady Susanna Appleton, who is writing an herbal and knowledgeable of poisons, suspects his death to be unnatural. In spite of tales that a ghost haunts Appleton Manor, Susanna decides to unmask the ghost, find the killer and put the manor to rights.

I'd not read Emerson before. Two things, in particular, stand out with her writing; her characters and her research.

Lady Susanna is delightful. She is smart--highly educated for the time, practical--not given to superstition or fancy, and independent. She is certainly the most developed of the characters, yet the personalities of the other characters come through as well.

Ms. Emerson's research is apparent. The period is a fascinating one in which there, as Sir Robert puts it "...too many queens..." The offset of Susanna's activities by Robert's in France, provides a view of their relationship and of the time. The information on plants and herbs was fascinating but I also didn't realize that hair jewelry, memorializing the dead, dates back as far as the 16 century.

The story is well plotted with a good balance of suspense. There was, however, a fairly obvious hint as to the killer. What was lacking was a strong sense of time and place.

At times, I felt the story read as much more modern than the setting. This was mainly due to the language being quite modern. However, as the first in a series, I did enjoy it enough that I'm interested in reading the next book.

FACE DOWN IN THE MARROW-BONE PIE (Hist. Mys-Lady Susanna Appleton-England-1559) - G+
Emerson, Kathy Lynn - 1st in series
St. Martin's Press, 1997, US Hardcover - ISBN: 0312151233

I really enjoyed this book. Emerson combined a twisty, intriguing puzzle with a classic battle of the sexes. Susanna, Lady Appleton, goes behind her husband's back to investigate the death of a steward found "face down in a marrow-bone pie," convinced he might have been poisoned. This enrages her husband, Sir Robert, the typical Elizabethan misogynist with definite ideas about "a woman's place" (even toward his sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth). Susanna always stays one step ahead of her husband, which irritates him to no end.

The book's pace was more sedate than many modern-day mysteries, but definitely worth it. Emerson's writing style reminded me a bit of Ellis Peters' "Brother Cadafel" mysteries. She revealed tiny pieces of the puzzle just often enough to keep me turning pages.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

I wasn't really sure that I would like this book, but the premise of the story interested me - so I thought that I'd give it a try. The story was much more entertaining than I originally thought it would be. I liked the character of Susanna. She was strong and, perhaps, more willful that can be healthy, but she could also be kind to those who others would see only as servants. I haven't yet read any of the other books in the series, but one thing I'd like to see happen is that Susanna and Robert would grow closer as husband and wife. Having Robert traipsing around with a "woman in every port" sort of life, could become annoying very fast.

The cover art and the title did not seem promising but I was pleasantly surprised by this well-written Medieval mystery. The characters, especially Lady Appleton, seemed very real. Like another reviewer noticed, the author spilled the beans too early (Chapter 4) but it was still an exciting ending even though I knew who the perp was.

Emerson's wonderfully complex character lives in a time of intrigues, secrets, and simmering unrest between Catholic France and Protestant England, and between England's secret "papists" and followers of the "New Religion." Restless Lady Susanna is anything but the socially acceptable compliant wife when she, over her husband Sir Robert's objections, travels from her home in Kent to the cold North to investigate the murder of the caretaker of the family's neglected estates. Well educated and wealthy, Susanna, an expert herbalist, is completing a compendium on the subject. Her knowledge of herbs plus her dogged persistence leads her to uncover unresolved troubles from the past, and the cause of the murder.

The story's description of English village and manor life is augmented by details of ambitious Sir Robert's travels to France as special courtier to Queen Elizabeth. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth, young Mary Stewart, and Queen Catherine de Medici, and hints of the looming Huguenot rebellions provide rich historical information for this era that the Scots clergyman John Knox labeled the "monstrous regiment of women."

The Elizabethan era is one of the most intriguing and fascinating times of England's colorful history. This may be the reason why so many authors, such as Fiona Buckley, Karen Harper, Edward Marston and Kathy Lynn Emerson, choose that time period as the backdrop for their mysteries. The glamour of court life, wars against Spain and France, and the strife at home give the authors plenty of events as a basis of their stories.

Emerson's first mystery with Lady Susanna Appleton is set in the first year of Elizabeth's reign. The Lady's husband Sir Robert is sent to France by good Queen Bess on a reconnaissance mission loosely disguised as a gift giving gesture to the new French king.

During his absence, Susanna travels to her husband's ancestral home Appleton Manor where the steward died under circumstances she finds odd. Although she and her retinue arrive several weeks after the death and there is no evidence that the man's passing was anything other than natural, Susanna continues to probe, snoop and ask questions surrounding the deaths of the steward and her father-in-law's two years prior.

Her investigation is thwarted by the local villagers' mistrust of the newcomers to the manor, the strange family of the neighboring manor and the general opinion that Sir Robert's boyhood home is haunted by a vengeful ghost.

Slowly but persevering, Lady Appleton finds out more about her husband's family and their history than he ever told her.

Emerson's Susanna is a very strong-will and stubborn woman who doesn't exactly bully her husband but forces her wishes and does what she wants. Sir Robert appears almost cuckolded. His trip to France in intermingled in the novel but adds nothing to the mystery and becomes more a distraction rather than a sub-plot. It was as if Emerson only used it to show her knowledge of the French monarchy during Elizabeth's early reign and get Sir Robert out of the way to allow Susanna her freedom to investigate the steward's death without interruption. The only cross-connect between the two stories is a brief but very important event at the climax of the mystery.

It seems that Susanna is based loosely on Queen Elizabeth I, whose intelligence, wit and eccentricities are portrayed accurately although the monarch makes a very brief appearance. But Lady Appleton becomes almost too over-bearing for the reader because she is always right with few flaws.

Even with all that, Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie is a fun read and does whet the readers' appetite for more. I definitely plan to continue reading Emerson's Face Down series.