Mystery writer Emerson back with one of her best

FACE DOWN BESIDE ST. ANNE’S WELL, by Kathy Lynn Emerson, Perseverance Press, McKinleyville, Calif., 240 pages, paperback, $13.95

Rosamund Appleton is absolutely certain that her tutor has been murdered. Others at Bawkenstanes Manor believe the Frenchwoman, found “limbs twisted and stiff and whitened by a light coating of hoarfrost” face down beside St. Anne’s well, simply slipped and fell.

The 12-year-old girl is certain the woman was fed a dose of deadly mushrooms. Her foster mother, Lady Susanna Appleton, doubts Rosamund’s theory, but the Elizabethan sleuth decides to investigate the death of Madame Louise Poirier at the healing waters of Buxton.

Her reasons for traveling north in April 1575, however, have more to do with diversion than detecting. Susanna wants to check up on her dead husband’s illegitimate daughter. The trip also will distract her from the absence of her longtime lover Nick Baldwin, who is far away on business.

Thus begins Kathy Lynn Emerson’s “Face Down Beside St. Anne’s Well,” the ninth mystery novel in her Lady Appleton series. The Wilton writer is back on track after a disappointing eighth book in the series that focused too much on plot and not enough on character.

In most of her books, who committed the crime is secondary to the interaction between the characters and to the everyday minutiae of Elizabethan England. In many of Emerson’s stories, the personal intrigue is played out against the political backdrop that often threatened the Virgin Queen’s reign. Her latest, thank goodness, is no exception.

The woman found dead near St. Anne’s well is suspected of being part of the latest plot to elevate the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots to her cousin’s throne. While Susanna attempts to learn how serious the conspiracy might be, Rosamund’s mother, Eleanor Pendennis, considers what kind of matrimonial match can be made for her only child.

Emerson does her best work in this series when she remembers that Lady Appleton is the sun the other characters circle as they spin, sometimes out of control, in their own orbits. “Face Down Beside St. Anne’s Well” is among Emerson’s best because she puts the emphasis on her core characters who have aged, changed and grown since they first appeared in “Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie,” set in 1559.

Her great strength as a writer is her portrayal of women, no matter their station in the stratified 16th century. Rosamund and her friends gossip about boys, surreptitiously enter the Buxton waters, warm as “hot honeyed milk” and plunge into intrigue with reckless abandon. Flanked by her loyal housekeeper and confidant Jennet Jaffrey, Susanna unravels the mystery one thread at a time in gentlewomen’s chambers rather than the great halls dominated by men.

It’s the relationships among the women who visit the hot springs in Buxton that make “Face Down Beside St. Anne’s Well” seem comfortable and familiar in the 21st century.

Judy Harrison can be reached at 990-8207 and jharrison@bangordailynews.net.