A Mansion and Its Murder. Robert Barnard

A Mansion and Its Murder. Robert Barnard by Robert Barnard. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780749010379.

Sarah Jane Fearing, the sole offspring of a father who desperately wants a male heir, has grown up in the imposing rural mansion of one of Englands most influential banking families. At the centre of Sarahs world stands her charming, generous uncle Frank, the only relative who seems to have escaped the straitjacket of ponderous respectability that so effectively stifles the Fearing family. Franks rebellions afford Sarah delight and hope, until his extravagant lifestyle leads him deeper into debt and manoeuvres him into a disastrous marriage. Franks wedding to a coldly ambitious woman produces the familys longed-for male scion, but the parents fall to quarrels, and then to murder. And Sarah is drawn inexorably into a morass that threatens the survival of the entire family. From the Belle Epoque at the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, A Mansion and its Murder holds its secrets to its last suspenseful moment, and proves again the authors mettle as a mastermind of the traditional mystery.