The Grenadillo Box - Hardcover

Gleeson, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593048032 ISBN 13: 9780593048030

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2002

Synopsis

It all starts with a body in the library. When Lord Montford is discovered shot, sprawled on the floor of his newly completed library, his faithful hound dead at his feet, a mystery is uncovered, the answer to which has its origins thirty years in the past. Nathaniel Hopson, journeyman for Thomas Chippendale, the famous English furniture designer, and the man who built Montford's sumptuous library, is the first on the scene. Within hours another body is discovered, that of Nathaniel's closest friend John Partridge, his hands badly mutilated. How is it that a Lord of the realm and a cabinetmaker's assistant should both be found dead on the same night, both in suspicious circumstances? Nathaniel is set on a course as the reluctant detective, driven to discover the truth of his friend's mysterious death and his connection with the murder of Lord Montford. In The Grenadillo Box Janet Gleeson has produced a detective story as intricately crafted as a Chippendale cabinet, a gripping story which brings to dramatic life the world of the Eighteenth century.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Gleeson is the author of works of fiction and nonfiction which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her books include The Arcanum, which was Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Sunday Times bestseller, The Money Maker, An Aristocratic Affair and The Lifeboat Baronet, as well as three historical crime novels. She has a BA Hons in English and Art History from Nottingham University and an MA from Birkbeck College, University of London. She worked at Sotheby's and Bonhams where she specialised in old master paintings before starting her writing career as a columnist for House & Garden and an editor for Reed Books. She lives in a medieval barn in Dorset.

From the Back Cover

It is New Year's Day 1755 and Nathaniel Hopson, journeyman to the famous cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, finds himself drawn into a chilling affair. While working at the country home of Lord Montfort, Nathaniel discovers his patron shot dead in his magnificent new library. The conclusion is obvious: Montfort burdened with gambling debts and recently possessed of a melancholic nature, must have taken his own life.

Nathaniel, however, is not convinced. The gun near Montfort's hand suggests suicide, but what of the blood on the windowsill and the confusion of footprints on the library floor? And there is another strange detail: Lord Montfort was found clutching a small and elaborately carved box of grenadillo wood. Does the answer to this most baffling of mysteries lie within this unusual keepsake?

No sooner has Nathaniel been set up as a most unlikely investigator than another body is found, frozen and cruelly mutilated. Nathaniel's detachment is shattered. He knows the victim well - but what was he doing on Montfort's country estate? Nathaniel's investigation will take him from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the slums of Fleet Street and the archives of London's Foundling Hospital, where the identity of a child abandoned twenty years ago may hold the key to the grenadillo box. But someone has already killed to keep this secret and each step Nathaniel takes on his journey is a step further into danger.

A powerful fiction début, The Grenadillo Box is a gripping detective story as intricately crafted as a Chippendale cabinet of curiosities. Janet Gleeson has recreated a vibrant eighteenth-century England rich in period detail. The bustling workshop of Thomas Chippendale and the intrigues of Georgian society provide the vivid backdrop to this compelling murder mystery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593048032
• ISBN 13: 9780593048030
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432