Death at the Emerald

Lady Frances Ffolkes finds herself in the middle of a 30-year-old missing persons case. Newly commissioned (by herself) as a consulting detective, she takes on the case in Death at the Emerald by R.J. Koreto.

Surprised to receive a summons from Lady Torrence, Lady Frances learns the woman wants her to find her missing daughter Louisa. Thirty years prior, Louisa abruptly left her family home because of her tyrannical father, but no one has heard from her since.

Louisa always had a love for the theater as a child and when she expressed an interest in becoming and actress, her father made plans to send her away. Before he could, she ran away and was never heard from again.

Using her maid Mallow as her Watson, Lady Frances 
assumes Sherlock Holmes' techniques and tries to discover what has happened to Louisa. Faced with a road block at the theater, she knows the men of the theater are lying about knowing Louisa. When one of them is found murdered outside the theater, she knows she is on the right path.

She finds a flyer in the belongings of the murdered man that promotes The Halliday Mission,

Maidstone, Kent, and discovers The Mission is now based in London. The Hallidays themselves are long dead, but their son Reverend Samuel Halliday is the vicar at a church in Wimbledon.

Unsure what if any connection there is to Louisa, who she now knows was an actress named Helen, Lady Frances sets out to meet the Reverend. When she discovers a grave with a huge monument towering over it, Lady Frances enlists of the aid of Scotland Yards' Inspector Eastley to help with the exhumation.

What she discovers leads her on a clever path of deception and mistaken identity. Another terrific adventure for Lady Frances Ffolkes and the dependable Mallow.

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