Remembering the Dead: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (Penny Brannigan Mystery, #10)

by Elizabeth J Duncan

In award-winning author Elizabeth J. Duncan's tenth Penny Brannigan mystery set in North Wales, Canadian amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan attends a dinner party at a posh country house--where a historic chair disappears and a waiter is murdered.

Artist and spa owner Penny Brannigan has been asked to organize a formal dinner to mark the centenary of the armistice that ended World War One. After dinner, the guests adjourn to the library for a private exhibition of the Black Chair, a precious piece of Welsh literary history awarded in 1917 to poet Hedd Wyn. But to the guests' shock, the newly restored bardic chair is missing. And then Penny discovers the rain-soaked body of a waiter.

When Penny learns that the victim was the nephew of one of her employees, she is determined to find the killer. Meanwhile, the local police search for the Black Chair. The Prince of Wales is due to open an exhibit featuring the chair in three weeks, so time is not on their side. A visit to a nursing home to consult an ex-thief convinces Penny that the theft of the Black Chair and the waiter's murder are connected. She rushes to Dublin to consult a disagreeable antiquarian, who might know more than he lets on, and during the course of her investigation confronts a gaggle of suspicious travelers and an eccentric herbalist who seems to have something to hide. Can Penny find the chair and the culprit before she is laid to rest in the green grass of Wales?

• ISBN10: 1643851136
• ISBN13: 9781643851136
• Publish Date: 10 September 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crooked Lane Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781643851136

Reviews

[Mystereity Reviews]

I've read this series since the beginning and I love how the world of Llanelen and the characters have grown and expanded as the series progressed. In this one, Penny is tasked with preparing an elegant old fashioned dinner party at the local estate, featuring a historic artifact - The Black Chair, an honorary award given to celebrated bards; this one was given to a poet who died in WWI and was posthumously awarded the chair. After being refurbished, it is set to become the feature attraction at a local museum, but not before being unveiled at the dinner party. The dinner party mostly goes off without a hitch until a waiter goes missing and is later found dead -and the chair is missing! Penny sets off to find out who killed the young man and to find the missing historic piece.

Penny is quite involved with this one, even to go so far as to take the ferry to Ireland to track down a suspect. She also has to deal with a caravan of gypsies who set up camp in a field next to her house, the re-appearance of Gareth, who is in town to settle some affairs, and several other small problems that crop up. I enjoyed watching Penny slowly untangle all the threads to expose a killer and a thief, and I love catching up with the villagers in the tiny Welsh town.

Always a good read, this is another excellent addition to the Penny Brannigan series.