Part of Lady Darby Mysteries
First published 2016
Kiera Darby and her new husband Sebastian Gage have barely unpacked in the Lake District when a letter from Gage's father pulls them away from their honeymoon. A woman with ties to the Duke of Wellington has been murdered at Rathfarnham Abbey, a school for girls just south of Dublin, and the Gages are the ones being asked to find out why. Ireland in the summer of 1831 is unsettled country, and the abbey offers no safety. A second nun is killed in broad daylight, steps from a room full of students. The mother superior wants to send the girls home, but the roads outside are too dangerous to use. Kiera moves through the school day by day, watching the students, and grows convinced that at least some of them are hiding what they saw. The killer keeps going. Kiera and Gage press harder. The investigation puts a strain on a marriage that is only weeks old, and the question stops being just who is responsible for the murders. It becomes whether Kiera and Gage can hold together long enough to stop what is coming next.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, historical-romance, thriller, detective, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, introspective, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, locked-location-mystery, married-couple-detective, secrets-and-lies
Setting: Lake District, Ireland, Dublin, Rathfarnham Abbey
Period: 1831, 19th century
342 pages · Paperback · Berkley
Content warnings: death, murder