Property of Lies: A Herbert Reardon Historical Mystery

In Eccles’s entertaining fourth 1930s mystery featuring Det. Insp. Herbert Reardon (after 2015’s Heirs and Assigns), Ellen Reardon, Herbert’s wife, is fortunate enough to be hired to replace the French teacher, who’s disappeared, at the newly founded Maxstead Court School for Girls, located near the English town of Folbury. During a tour of the school grounds, Ellen notices something odd amid the rubble of a partially demolished building. It turns out to be the decomposing body of Mademoiselle Isabelle Blanchard, the missing French teacher. Reardon arrives and meets with the school’s brisk and efficient headmistress, Edith Hillyard, who fought for women’s rights and drove ambulances on the front line in France during the Great War. As he questions the school’s teachers and pupils, he begins to sense that a dark and dangerous undercurrent lies below Maxstead’s seemingly placid surface. The clues are clearly presented, but the ending will still come as a surprise. (Sept.)