1928, New Year’s Eve, Dartmoor. Ravenswick Abbey, the family seat of the Ravenswick family. A gathering for family and faithful servants is arranged in the upstairs room of the bed-bound Lord Ravenswick. Nine people step into the lift. The lights go out and a gunshot is heard – and when the lights come back on, Charles Ravenswick, the heir to the family fortune, lies dead on the floor.

A year passes and no one was ever convicted of the crime. Everyone is still bound to the house and The Comet sends Charlotte Blood to investigate the crime, under the pretence of studying the ravens kept at the Abbey. But Charlotte is haunted by her own past – this might be the chance to finally forge a new path for herself, provided she can survive the experience…

Presenting Charlotte Blood, the best-read of any fictional detective, as amongst the mystery novels on her shelf is the one and only The Billiard Room Mystery. Nothing to do with friend-of-the-blog Victoria Dowd being a fan of dear old Anthony Bathurst thanks to the reprints. So by a stretch of logic, I can take credit for four whole words in this book! Go me!

Regular readers of the blog (and well-read mystery readers in general) will recall Victoria as the author of the Smart Women series and winner of the Puzzly for Murder Most Cold, an ingenious locked-lake murder. I’ve heard this one is described by Victoria as… no, I’m not going to say it. Don’t read the blurb, as the pithy description of this one, coupled with my knowledge of Victoria’s knowledge of the genre, did give me a huge clue in solving this one. Oh, I got it wrong, let’s be clear, but it did give me a major steer in the direction in which to look.

This book is definitely embracing the gothic sensibility. That’s not always my cup of tea – Christianna Brand’s attempt, Cat And Mouse, really didn’t work for me – but I found myself getting rather intrigued both with the Ravenswick household and with Charlotte’s back story. Probably a good thing that I found that back story interesting because there is quite a lot of it, especially in the middle section of the narrative.

In the final section, it veers very much back into the traditional detective story – the majority of the detection and deduction take place in the final section. The solution makes sense, and there are clues to it throughout the book and given what actually happened, I can see how hard it would be to nudge the reader slightly in the right direction, rather than completely in the direction, hence the deduction being left to the end. It’s a pretty good solution.

All in all, a very promising beginning to a new series and as it continues with an increased role, I assume, for one character, I look forward to seeing how things develop,

Death In The Aviary is out now in ebook and paperback. Many thanks for the review copy.