Assassins at Ospreys

ASSASSINS AT OSPREYS is the most exciting mystery I've read in ages; don't let the deflationary times we live in prevent you from a roller coaster ride of fun, just plunk your money down and take a chance. Even if by some weird chance you missed either of the preceding novels, this will still ring your bells on multiple levels. All you need to know is that Raichev's heroine, Antonia Darcy, has become an admired and astute detective writer and has married the man she met in her first recorded case (The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette), the affable Hugh, Major Payne. Signing books at a literary festival in England, Antonia meets two fans with more on their minds than mere autographs. We begin to suspect right away that Antonia (and Hugh?) are being targeted by a pair of deep planners with murder on their minds. That suspicion may or may not be justified, but Raichev is among the few present-day novelists about whom it can be said, not a word is wasted. He is the perfect storyteller for our modern age, for all that his delightful confections have a "Golden Age" aura that puts them considerably above the products of his contemporaries. In addition, many of his most successful characters are female, and right away we meet two of the best, the sinister nurse Ingrid (whom Hugh christens "Cerberus" at first hearing about her), and Beatrice Ardleigh, the blonde invalid Ingrid wheels around (and whom Antonia calls "Goldilocks."). We learn that Ingrid feels responsible for the pretty Beatrice's plight, due to a nasty auto accident of some years earlier. The revelation of their true relations forms the emotional heart of the novel, and will keep you guessing until the very last page. Also involved in the story are Ralph Renshawe, the aging, invalid heir of a vast and rundown estate, and the compromised clergyman, Father Lillie-Lysander. Nurses and mysterious husbands complete the picture, and Hugh and Antonia find themselves drawn in little by little into a terrifying plot that threatens their very lives. Raichev doesn't miss a trick of surprise or suspense, and even the titles of his chapters amuse. His literate wit, Gothic imagination, and mad exuberance have made him my favorite UK thriller writer of the present moment. Here's hoping for many sequels, many fetes.

In this, the third Country House mysteries, one finds oneself in Christie territory, literally and figuratively. The tale begins at Hay-on-Wye, where the protagonist, author Antonia Darcy, is appearing on a panel of crime writers, being gushed over by an apparently devoted fan, one Beatrice ("Bee") Ardleigh. In short order Antonia and her husband, Major Hugh Payne, become embroiled in Bee's complicated life. Bee appears to be an invalid, being confined to a wheelchair, but is she really? She has as a companion, Ingrid, a decidedly strange woman with whom she has lived for decades, who appears to loathe Bee's new husband [calling him "the interloper]." And she appears on the brink of being the sole heir of a very wealthy man she hasn't seen or heard from in many decades, one Ralph Renshawe, owner of the eponymous Ospreys, a "bleak Gothic mansion on the border between Oxfordshire and Berkshire" [now fallen into disrepair]. The reader is aware of the identity of the intended murder victim, but there is no dead body until more than halfway through the novel, something which startled me when I became aware of it. So much for the perpetual argument as to how soon in a book a body should first be discovered. Here there is no sense of the author having waited too long for that plot development - the journey has been too much fun to even notice. And just when a murder appears to take place, the author provides a twist sure to have the reader puzzled, but only for a little while. The book is full of drollery and literary quotes, references and allusion, as well as bits of Latin and French. Ingrid thinks of Antonia's books as each being "a mere commercially motivated replica of its predecessor. Variations on a tried, if tired, lucrative theme. Well-bred characters sitting beside cosy fires, drinking tea, deliberating whodunit ad nauseam." Ospreys is referred to as a "house of death," characters as "devilishly devious," the case as a whole "marked by a pervading sense of strangeness." And all around Ospreys are the ever-present rooks, giving to the whole an ominous feel reminiscent of Hitchcock. A subtle, clever and altogether delightful read, and recommended.

Mystery writer Antonia Darcy and her husband Major Hugh Payne attend a literary gala in Hay-on-Wye. At the festival they meet an odd couple, wheelchair bound seductive Beatrice "Bee" Ardleigh and her companion sober Ingrid Delmar. They enjoy the flirtatious sexy Bee, but find Ingrid overly prim and proper. A few months later, Bee invites the couple to visit her at her home Oxfordshire they accept. In Oxfordshire, Antonia and Hugh learn Bee has surprisingly married and Ingrid pretends to be Bee while seeing a dying neighbor; whose will bequests his home Ospreys, known in the region as "the secret house of death", to the National Trust. However, the abode lives up to its reputation when someone murders a priest there leading to Antonia and Hugh investigating the crime.. The third Darcy-Payne mystery (see THE DEATH OF CORRINE and THE HUNT FOR SONYA DUFRETTE) is a fabulous whodunit that starts off innocently but soon spins into a murder investigation. The story line is filled with twists and fascinating support characters, who break stereotypes especially the sex siren Bee. Fans of an old fashion entertaining investigative thriller will want to read ASSASSINS AT OSPREYS and its predecessors as this is a solid series. Harriet Klausner

ASSASSINS AT OSPREYS is nearly on par with THE HUNT FOR SONYA DUFRETTE and a bit higher than THE DEATH OF CORINNE on my enjoyment meter. I really admire R. T. Raichev's ability to tell an unpredictable suspense tale. He succeeds beautifully here in crafting pottily eccentric characters whose circumstances and personalities fatefully corner them. ASSASSINS ingeniously manages a host of details -- one can think of the author as having scored and conducted a symphony, making sure all the "instruments" (characters) had their own parts to play and yet blending them into a rigorous set of movements. In this outing, Antonia meets "the maids," at one of her book signings: long term companions who "appealed to her sense of anomaly. They stimulated her Gothic imagination." The wheelchair-bound, talkative Beatrice chats like a magpie while the taciturn Ingrid repeatedly says it is time to go. Beatrice (Bee) boldly predicts to her favorite author: " 'Shall I tell you what I think? I think you are going to put us in your next book,' " and asks Antonia to visit them at their home, Millbrook House. Months later Hugh and Antonia take up that invitation and discover that Bee still shares her house with Ingrid but has also become ambulatory and a newlywed. Hugh nicknames the ladies, Goldilocks and Cerberus, respectively -- not to their faces, of course. Goldilocks, despite her marriage and his, has a bit of a crush on Hugh, prompting an unfamilair streak of jealousy in Antonia. As the plot thickens, the amateur detective couple is drawn into a web, gothic indeed, that radiates out from Bee and Ingrid, their histories, their warped and secretive personalities, and their vengeful occupations. Each chapter is a little gem, presenting, with clockwork precision, the clues needed to solve the crimes committed, but written with the suave guile necessary to deliciously misdirect: Hugh's left-behind tobacco pouch touches off a fateful series of events, including an ominous bonfire. A "monstrosity," a pink conservatory, is among the locations surrounding the Ospreys mansion we readers several times want to urge Hugh and Antonia to search. And Raichev imbues several chapters with especially inspired invasions of character minds; two, concerning Len (Bee's husband) and Ingrid, really shine. Although this country house mystery employs "assassins" in its title, the reader will come to understand it does so in a literary, not strictly literal, manner. This too misdirects attention a tad. As I was reading, I kept wondering whether the potential murder victims had some secret identity that merited them being assassinated rather than more "commonly" murdered. Also, perhaps cinematically, I tend to associate the term "assassin" with someone who is a spy or a ninja or a professional killer or something like that, so I also wondered whether anyone had a secret identity on that order. However, ASSASSINS AT OSPREYS ratchets up suspense differently, and, in fact, the mundane origins