Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Carol Goodman celebrates the Golden Age of mystery in this delightfully twisty inheritance drama in the tradition of Agatha Christie.

Kate Mortimer, proprietor of The Mystery Bookshop, loves all things mystery; especially the Golden Age novels her grandmother, internationally acclaimed writer Elinor Mortimer, is famous for. Her grandmother, on the other hand, is harder to love.

When Kate’s mother was killed in a car accident, her grandmother took her in, but she was too mired in her own grief to pay much attention to Kate. Kate turned to Elinor’s books instead—the Miss Rumple series, which gave her the comfort that her grandmother couldn’t. Now, her grandmother has sent an invitation—really more of a dictate—summoning the family to celebrate Christmas together. But not for sentimental reasons—Elinor believes she is going to be murdered.

Resentful of the dramatics but also just a bit curious, Kate returns to her grandmother’s Hudson Valley estate, Falaise. There, she must contend with the Mortimer clan, each of whom has designs on Elinor’s estate and reason to want her out of the way. But is Elinor really in danger, or is this just another one of her manipulative tactics to keep Kate under her thumb? And what does this drama have to do with the accident that killed Kate’s mother years ago?

Kate will have to use all the skills she learned from Miss Rumple to untangle the truth—and maybe even stop a killer—in this perfectly plotted homage to the Golden Age of mystery.