Big Thrill Recommends The Big Thrill Recommends: MURDER AT VINLAND, A GILDED NEWPORT MYSTERY by Alyssa Maxwell

The Big Thrill Recommends: MURDER AT VINLAND, A GILDED NEWPORT MYSTERY by Alyssa Maxwell

By Susan Santangelo

It’s August 1901 in Newport, Rhode Island. The top tier of the town’s social strata is attending a fundraiser luncheon to benefit the new Rhode Island Audubon Society at Vinland, a mansion owned by Florence Vanderbilt Trombly. The luncheon’s guest of honor is Edith Roosevelt, wife of Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. Emma Cross Andrews, a reporter for the Newport Messenger and a distant relative of the Vanderbilt family, is also on the guest list, as are visitors from Florida—Amity Carter and her niece, Zinnia Lewis. Emma discovers during the luncheon that Amity is the heir to the valuable piece of property that she and her new husband, Newport Messenger publisher Derrick Andrews, hope to purchase to build their new home. Since the two out-of-towners are currently staying at a boarding house, Emma invites them to be guests at her current home, Gull Manor, while they discuss the property’s future.

The morning after the luncheon, Charlotte Robinson, one of the attendees, becomes violently ill. The local doctor suspects she was poisoned, and while he has no idea what poison was used, he insists the police be called immediately. Detective Jesse Whyte, an old friend of Emma’s, asks her to help in his investigation, as she has in several others. Emma discovers that Mrs. Robinson had eaten several petit fours earlier that day from a gift box supposedly sent by the vice president’s wife. Who really sent the gift box, and why was Mrs. Robinson targeted? Sadly, before the police can question Mrs. Robinson, she dies. A few more luncheon guests also receive the mysterious boxes and become violently ill but survive.

When the daughter of another luncheon guest is found murdered in a particularly grisly way, Jesse and Emma realize they must step up their investigation before another innocent person dies.

MURDER AT VINLAND is a real page turner of a tale with a shocking ending I didn’t see coming. An excellent addition to an always entertaining series.