Starred review from August 26, 2019
Widower Samson Delaware, the hero of this outstanding tale of murder, obsession, and revenge from Wright (the Kat Stone series), is slipping into loneliness and isolation in tiny Cedarville, Tenn., where he works as an antiques restorer. Then the area’s only celebrity, Barbara Lace, dies. Lace returned to her hometown, where “she led a quiet life, playing the recluse with Oscar-worthy intensity” after more than 40 years in Hollywood as a B-list actress. Lace’s three-story Victorian house, a treasure trove of antiques, draws the attention of Delaware, who isn’t above bending the law if it means possessing something original. On a covert visit to the property, he hears gunfire. Racing upstairs, he finds Callista Weathers, Lace’s assistant, murdered. His spiraling investigation into the two women’s deaths leads him to think “did madness start like this? A sliver of obsession that turns into a ravine, tempting for its promise of abyss, of losing yourself.” The action builds to a thoroughly satisfying and exciting finale. Wright provides it all: clean prose, captivating characters, a gripping mystery, and a wry look at Hollywood glamour and decay. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary.
October 1, 2019
Despite relative success as a movie and television actress for more than four decades, Barbara Lace failed to achieve stardom and returned to her hometown of Cedarville, Tennessee, to live as a recluse. When Lace is found dead in her bed, antiques dealer Samson Delaware is one of the men called to carry her body to the waiting hearse. Delaware, a widower who's still a relative newcomer in the small town, suspects that Lace's death might not have been from natural causes, though he knows that Cedarville residents have been protective of the town's sole celebrity. When Lace's executive assistant, Callista Weathers, is shot in Lace's house, it's definitely murder, and Delaware is enlisted by the local sheriff to help investigate. Though an unlikely sleuth, Delaware is undeterred, even when he receives a letter seemingly from Lace herself denying her death and telling him to stop. Wright successfully combines small-town sensibility with the money and glitz of twentieth-century Hollywood in a suspenseful mystery populated with winning characters, none more warmly appealing than Samson Delaware himself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)