Murder by Numbers

by Eric Brown

Overview

And then there was one . . . can Donald Langham and Maria Dupré stop a killer who's picking off victims one by one?

December, 1956. Donald Langham's wife Maria Dupré receives a chilling invitation to attend a death at the home of Maxwell Falwell Fenton in Essex. The once-prominent artist has a number of enemies, and has faded into obscurity since the war ended. Is the invitation to his own death or someone else's?

Arriving at Winterfield on a cold winter evening, Donald and Maria meet five strangers who have also received numbered invitations. They all had a reason to hate or fear Maxwell, including Maria, who reveals a secret from her own past. But is she telling the whole truth?

The soiree produces a gruesome and dramatic twist, but it's about to get much worse when someone starts picking off the six, one by one. Can Donald untangle lies, betrayal, and incredible revelations to identify the killer before Maria becomes the next victim?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448306183
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	01/27/2022
Series:	A Langham & Dupre Mystery , #7
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

Two times winner of the British Science Fiction Award, Eric Brown is the author of thirty science fiction novels and numerous short story collections. He writes a monthly review column for the Guardian. He has written five previous Langham Dupré mysteries, Murder by the Book, Murder at the Chase, Murder at the Loch, Murder Take Three and Murder Takes a Turn. Born in Haworth, West Yorkshire, he now lives near Dunbar in Scotland.

Editorial Reviews

12/14/2020

Brown’s solid seventh mystery featuring private detective and thriller writer Donald Langham and his wife, literary agent Marie Dupré (after 2019’s Murder Served Cold), opens on December 3, 1956, when Maria receives an invitation, marked with the number 6, to “attend a death” that evening. The sender is artist Maxwell Fenton, whom Maria struck and scarred with a fireplace poker after he made aggressive sexual advances decades before. At the artist’s Essex home, a gaunt and barely recognizable Fenton details his grievances against each of the six guests and then shoots himself. Witnessing his suicide seems to be Fenton’s revenge, until three of the guests he assembled are murdered in the order indicated by the numbers on their invitations to Fenton’s death. Maria is clearly in danger, but who’s committing crimes motivated by a dead man’s grudges? Langham investigates an actor friend of Fenton’s who disappeared around the time of the shooting. Though copious backstory slows the early chapters, clever plot twists soon spin the dramatic premise into a gripping tale. Agatha Christie fans will have fun. Agent: John Jarrold, John Jarrold Literary (U.K.). (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Another fine entry in a reliably entertaining series"

Booklist on Murder Served Cold

"Well-realized characters and a beautifully evoked setting"

Booklist on Murder Takes a Turn

“A classic English mystery with plenty of unexpected plot twists” – Kirkus Reviews

“Clever plot twists spin the dramatic premise into a gripping tale. Agatha Christie fans will have fun” – Publishers Weekly

“Brown … has a real knack for historical mystery; his version of Britain in the 1950s, especially the social strata that existed at the time, is vividly re-created and striking in its verisimilitude” – Booklist

From the Publisher

"Another fine entry in a reliably entertaining series"

null Booklist on Murder Served Cold

"Well-realized characters and a beautifully evoked setting"

null Booklist on Murder Takes a Turn

"Well-realized characters and a beautifully evoked setting"

Booklist on Murder Takes a Turn

"Another fine entry in a reliably entertaining series"

Booklist on Murder Served Cold

2020-10-14
A British detective battles to unmask a killer before his wife becomes victim No. 6.

Donald Langham and his French wife, Maria, are in the middle of buying a cottage in Suffolk when Maria arrives at the office with a bizarre invitation to attend a death at the home of Maxwell Falwell Fenton. When she was just 18, Maria was infatuated with the much older artist until he asked her to pose nude and she fought him off with a poker. The couple drive to Fenton’s crumbling estate to find that actress Holly Beckwith, George Goudge and his art critic wife, Hermione, poet Crispin Proudfoot, and Dr. Bryce are fellow invitees. Greeted by a butler, they each take numbered seats and are allowed to see Fenton, who is dying and almost unrecognizable. After excoriating and threatening them, he shoots himself. It seems like a simple suicide until the guests begin to be murdered in horrific ways in the order of their seat numbers. A call from DI Mallory, who finds the hanging death of Dr. Bryce fishy, involves Langham and Ralph Ryland, the partner in his detective agency, in a grim effort to halt the slaughter. As each guest is killed, Langham tries to protect the survivors while digging into Fenton’s thoroughly reprehensible past for clues.

A classic English mystery with plenty of unexpected plot twists.

Kirkus Reviews