A Death at Fountains Abbey

De: Antonia Hodgson

Narrado por: Joseph Kloska

The new twisting mystery from CWA Historical Dagger 2014 winner Antonia Hodgson.

Late spring, 1728, and Thomas Hawkins has left London for the wild beauty of Yorkshire - forced on a mission he can't refuse. John Aislabie, one of the wealthiest men in England, has been threatened with murder. Blackmailed into investigating, Tom must hunt down those responsible - or lose the woman he loves forever.

Arriving at the grand estate of Studley Royal, Tom realises that the threats to Aislabie and his family must be connected to someone in the house itself. Could one of the servants be responsible? And what of the mysterious Mrs Fairwood, the young widow who claims to be Aislabie's lost daughter?

Far from the ragged comforts of home, Tom and his ward, Sam Fleet, enter a world of elegant surfaces and hidden danger. Someone is determined to punish John Aislabie - and anyone who stands in the way. As the violence escalates and shocking truths are revealed, Tom is dragged inexorably towards the darkest night of his life.

Inspired by real characters, events and settings, A Death at Fountains Abbey is a gripping stand-alone historical thriller. It also continues the story that began with the award-winning The Devil in the Marshalsea and The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins.

©2016 Antonia Hodgson (P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton

Great story!

enjoyed this book enormously--good character development, great plot twists , superb narrator. first book by this author. looking forward to the next.

A murder/mystery in Yorkshire

This is my favorite book of the series by far, but I do think it is slightly due to the fact that this is the first book Tom has not been thrown into jail. To be fair, he is locked up in this book, but think more house arrest than like the previous books where he ended up in the Marshalsea and Newgate. This is practically luxurious in comparison. This is a mystery book that takes place on a country estate and that is one of my favorite mystery book conventions, so it's no surprise I also loved this book.

We found out at the end of the last book that Tom has been blackmailed by Queen Caroline to take this trip to Yorkshire. He is to retrieve a ledger from a man named John Aislabie. John Aislabie is actually a real man from the history books and depicted here quite interestingly. I had never heard of the South Sea Scheme, but think Enron and Ponzi scheme. A lot of people bought into the company, got rich quick, insider trading was involved, and many, many people lost their newfound wealth as an end result. And people were ruined because of it. This book never quite addresses what the company traded in and was all about, but a quick search will of course point out that it was slavery. The South Sea Company was in the business of slaves. And John Aislabie was the man in charge of the books/ledgers involved in the stocks of it all.

In this story, the royal family was involved with the insider trading bit of it and if the ledger was revealed to the world, they'd be ruined so they wanted it back. And Aislabie has blackmailed the Queen with this in order to help him with something, else he'll reveal their involvement. His problem is that he has threats upon his life. When Tom arrives at Aislabie's house, it's pretty apparent that the man has many enemies so it's not making Tom's life any easier to locate who would want this man dead, because it would be easier to create a list of who DOESN'T want him dead.

This is the first book where the audiobook is a singular narrator across countries. The UK narrator for the first two books, Joseph Kloska, is also the narrator for the US edition of the audiobook and I do prefer his narration so much more. He just sounds more like the age Tom actually is (26). His female voices are...okay. Like, they're acceptable. However, Tom is the primary narrator of the entire book so it's fine. This book is mostly in Tom's first-person POV except for a few chapters here and there in third-person past and third-person present POVs.

I will say though, the narrator's pronunciation of Byzantine was so weird to me that I still don't know if that's a UK pronunciation or strictly the narrator's pronunciation for it. The production of this audiobook is better than the last two though. There weren't any weird errors, and no sound effects. Unfortunately, this audiobook narrator does not read the end notes by the author about the historical research she did. It was read on the US narration for book 1 (although it was left off for book 2's audiobook even in the US production).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is in part because it was slightly less stressful than the last two books and we could really focus on the mystery and the characters with less threat to Tom and Kitty's life than there was before. We're also in a new setting and not in London, which I found refreshing. Tom is really taken with the countryside. He grew up in the country and it seems as if he would actually fare better there without the vices of London to lure him in all the time. Although he does seem to grow restless if he stays still too long, so I'm not sure how long exactly he would last in the country or even how he would make money since his only way to making his own fortune thus far has been at the gambling tables. But I guess we'll see where this series takes him and Kitty (and possibly Sam). I can't believe I'm about to go into the last book in this series. I've throughly enjoyed these books so far, and with this last one I will have caught up with the author's backlist of books.