Saint's Rest

Merlin Richards #2

by Keith Miles

While the Great Depression has tightened its grip on the world, there are still some who have money to fulfill all their dreams. One of these men is Hobart St. John, who wants a sixteen-room mansion in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. For young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on the house is the answer to a prayer. That the assignment should have gone to a senior member of the firm gives Richards a moment's pause, but it's not enough to stop him.
Neither do the How did the prime site open up so conveniently? What happened to the house that had been there? Why did the small company where he works get the job?
And why was the body, which he finds hanging from a rafter on the site, described in a brief news mention as that of a drifter who committed suicide? Clearly, the man had been well-groomed and expensively dressed, and just as clearly, his hands had been tied behind his back. Just how does one manage to commit suicide that way?
His dream assignment is fast becoming a nightmare, and Merlin Richards realizes all too quickly that the answers he wants might cost him his life.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Pseudonyms: Edward Marston, A.E. Marston, Martin Inigo, Conrad Allen, David Garland, Christopher T. Mountjoy

Keith Miles (born 1940) is an English author, who writes under his own name and also historical fiction and mystery novels under the pseudonym Edward Marston. He is known for his mysteries set in the world of Elizabethan theater. He has also written a series of novels based on events in the Domesday Book.

The protagonist of the theater series is Nicholas Bracewell, the bookholder of a leading Elizabethan theater company (in an alternate non-Shakespearean universe).

The latter series' two protagonists are the Norman soldier Ralph Delchard and the former novitiate turned lawyer Gervase Bret, who is half Norman and half Saxon.

His latest series of novels are based in early Victorian period and revolve around the fictional railway detective Inspector Robert Colbeck.

Series:
* City Hospital
* Action Scene
* Alan Saxon
* Merlin Richards

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mr. Miles sets his book and protagonist Merlyn Richards in Chicago during the American depression. The hero is an architect (an intriguing profession), the women are described as smart and sassy or svelte and alluring, there are capitalists who are above the law (or at least own more than their share of the police force), and there is sex outside of marriage. In spite of all this promise, the plot is mechanistic, the hero is righteous to the point of adolescent outrage, and the dialogue is lumpish and unbelievable.