Customer Reviews

Face Down Under The Wych Elm

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With her husband now dead, Susanna Lady Appleton of Leigh Abbey in Kent controls all the lands that her deceased spouse used to manage. Susanna is wealthy and has more freedom than most women even under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Susanna refuses to marry because she is sick of being under the control of a male as she has all her life.

Instead, Susannah agrees to become the mistress of her neighbor Nick Baldwin. She accompanies him when he travels to Meidstrom where he has a case pending before the summer Assizes. When they arrive in town, Susanna is shocked to learn that her husband's former mistress Constance Crane and her relative are being held on charges of witchcraft. Knowing the woman is not a witch and feeling some sort of weird obligation, Susanna sets out to prove the innocence of the two women. In doing so, individuals who want the two women burned at the stake begin to look closely at Susanna's behavior.

The fifth installment of the Face Down series provides a very lucid picture of upper class life in Elizabethan England. Kathy Lynn Emerson does a splendid job of showing the power of superstition even as an age of enlightenment spreads across the land. The mystery is also well written but FACE DOWN UNDER THE WYTCH ELM belongs to Susanna, a woman rejecting the place society demands she accept.

Harriet Klausner

In my opinion, this is one of the best historical mystery series currently in publication. Susanna, Lady Appleton, is an inspiring and wonderful addition to the ranks of female investigators -- she's independent, brave and possesses a strong sense of justice. And Kathy Lynn Emerson has created a believable set of circumstances that allows for Susanna to maintain her independence and to conduct her affairs as she sees fit in Elizabethan England. Susanna is a widow and rich in her own right and (most importantly) possesses no male relatives who could try to curb and restrain her. This allows her to pretty much do as she pleases within reason. And when it is brought to her attention that one of her husband's former lovers, Constance Crane is now facing charges of murder and witchcraft, Susanna, who had in a previous adventure been similarly charged, feels that she must to do something to help the woman.

From her previous experience, she knows that women are especially vulnerable to such charges because the burden of proof lies with the accused rather than with the accuser and that such accusations are quite frequently grounded in superstitious beliefs and fantasies, not on fact and tangible evidence. Not believing in witchcraft herself, Susanna realises that she must look into the deaths more closely in order to prove Constance and her cousin Lucy innocent. And she is determined to prove that the Crane cousins have been wrongfully accused. But as she starts her investigation, Susanna comes to realise that there is something quite sinister afoot, and that if her suspicions are correct, then two innocent women are being framed for some more nefarious reason than fear and superstition. But can Susanna prove the Crane cousins's innocence, and before she herself is charged with witchcraft herself or killed?

This is a well written and tautly paced novel. And there are enough suspects with tenous claims to guilt to keep you guessing as to who the culprit is and what the motif could be. The pecarious fate that Constance and Lucy find themselves in is spot on. Kathy Lynn Emerson does a very good job in depicting the fear and the frustration and the anger that Constance and Lucy feel. She also does a very good job at making Elizabethan England come alive.

A brilliant installment in a wonderful series. I just wish that Kathy Lynn Emerson could write two or three Susanna Appleton mysteries a year!

This is the first book I have read by Ms. Emerson and it was no great shakes. There are other authors of historical mysteries that are much more descriptive of daily life and produce a much richer overall mystery (see my other reviews).

This novel has Susanna,Lady Appleton as detective extraordinaire. To me it seemed that Lady Appleton's serving girl Jennet did a better job of sleuthing than did Lady Appleton.

Susanna, in all her piety, has to help her dead husband's mistress Constance and Constance's cousin Lucy clear their names of witchcraft before they go to the gallows. This seems pretty strange to me. Susanna also has to outmaneuver her boyfriend's sly and hateful mother.

I agree with the first reviewer. There are better of this genre.