A Gilded Age Mystery #5
Kensington
November 2020
On Sale: November 24, 2020
304 pages ISBN: 1496722124 EAN: 9781496722126 Kindle: B085LT77MV Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
The pursuit of stolen diamonds once belonging to Marie Antionette leads heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter down a twisted maze through Gilded Age New York City from Fifth Avenue to Five Points . . . DEATH, DIAMONDS, AND DECEPTION Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake. Insisting on absolute discretion to avoid scandal, the banker employs Prudence and Geoffrey to recover the stolen diamonds pried out of their settings—priceless stones acquired by Tiffany, originally purchased for Marie Antoinette. Their search for a possible fence rapidly leads to a dead end: a jeweler brutally killed in his shop during an apparent theft.
The jeweler's murder is only the first in a string of mysterious deaths, as Prudence and Geoffrey pursue their elusive quarry. But the clues keep leading back to duplicity on the part of the De Vries family, who, it turns out, have a great deal to hide . . .