Recent Reads - The Counterfeit Heiress

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 The Counterfeit Heiress: A Lady Emily Mystery by Tasha Alexander - I had been eagerly awaiting this latest addition to the Lady Emily Mystery series for quite some time. In this ninth installment in the series, Emily and Colin attend a masquerade ball in London and have a brief but strange encounter with a woman posing as intrepid world traveler Estella Lamar. Their friend Cecile knows Estella and exposes the fraud immediately, and the woman flees, only to be murdered a few blocks away. The host of the party engages Emily and Colin to investigate. Not only are they looking for the murderer and his motive, but they must discover whether Estella was the intended victim, and why the woman was impersonating her. And for that matter, where is Estella Lamar? More questions arise about whether she is truly traveling the world, and if she is even alive.

This is definitely a unique mystery with a rather unusual plot! The chapters alternate between Lady Emily's first person narrative and a third person account of Estella that takes place in the past, beginning in her childhood, but mostly taking place in the days when she first left her Paris home about twenty years before. There are clues for the reader in the Estella chapters but the description of her activities ends far enough in the past that there are questions about her fate and whereabouts that cannot be fully answered until Emily and Colin finally find the answers.

By the same author: Behind the Shattered Glass, Death in the Floating City, A Crimson Warning, Dangerous to Know, Tears of Pearl, A Fatal Waltz, A Poisoned Season, And Only to Deceive

 (Book #51 in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge)

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