DEATH IN THE AVIARY is the first book in THE BLOOD CHRONICLES
… a new series of gothic murder mysteries featuring journalist Charlotte Blood.
DEATH IN THE AVIARY follows the exploits of new sleuth – Charlotte Blood.
December 1929, and back-room journalist Charlotte Blood is sent to Ravenswick Abbey, the isolated home of the Ravenswicks deep in the wilds of Dartmoor. Her mission is to investigate the murder of the heir to the fortune, shot dead on New Year’s Eve exactly one year ago. His death remains a mystery – a crime that apparently remains impossible to solve. The peculiar and sinister family are all bound by a murder they are all equally suspected of committing. Unable to leave their childhood home, they remain caged in the beautiful crumbling Abbey. It is not only their ravens who have had their wings clipped. Nothing is what it seems. The valuable books hidden in their library hold unseen stories beneath their words. The ravens, housed in a vast aviary and taught by their owners to be perfect mimics, have their own tales to tell.
Young widow, Charlotte Blood, faces an impenetrable mystery. A lift, built in the shape of a vast bird cage, was installed for the ailing Lord Ravenswick. Nine people entered it on New Year’s Eve. But when the temperamental structure failed again, only eight people came out alive. The heir to the fortune was shot in the dark. When the lights came back on, Charles Ravenswick was dead, a gun in the centre of the floor. With no way in and no way out, one of the party in the lift must have fired the gun. But in the absence of any clues, Charlotte must work out who.
As she starts to unlock the secrets of the Ravenswicks, questions from her own past begin to surface. Was her devoted husband, Archie, really the man he said he was? Is her landlady, Mrs C, more than just a whiskey drinking detective novelist?
Nothing will ever be the same for Charlotte Blood. When she steps through the doors of Ravenswick Abbey, she enters a home haunted by death and one that still houses a murderer.
But who fired the gun?
DEATH IN THE AVIARY is available to pre-order here.
I’ll be posting more in the next few weeks about Charlotte and the strange menagerie of potential murderers who live at Ravenswick Abbey.