Grave goods

Tamara Hoyland #3

by Jessica Mann

The coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas day in the year 800 was the central event of the middle ages and altered the history of the world.’

One of the sets of his regalia is the subject of Grave Goods. Tamara Hoyland the clever, cool heroine of earlier novels, finds that someone is trying to kill Margot Ellice, a woman who is only interesting for one reason, that she is writing about the life of the morganatic wife of a Prince of Horn, in the mid-nineteenth century.

The material is correspondence between her, the former Lady Artemis Bessemer, and her sister Lady Clementine, written from the Horn family palaces in Prussia.

Margot’s book opens with the sentence, ‘Lady Artemis Bessemer was sold by her father to the hereditary prince of Horn in the autumn of 1858.’ Now an exhibition is to come to London from Prussia – a diplomatic gesture by the east Germans. The centrepiece will be Charlemagne’s regalia which were thought never to have left the Horn palace at Drachenschloss before. But in doing research into the Horn family, Margot seems to have aroused passions, from greed to embarrassment or terror. She will not be the only person to die as desperate attempts are made to discover what really happened to those ancient treasures.

Faced with a complex puzzle, Tamara is at her most impressive in this new adventure, a story of formidable virtuosity, lucidly and elegantly told and leading to a finely ironic conclusion.

Genres: Mystery

175 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Crime-writer Jessica Mann was born in London, England in 1937. She studied archaeology at Cambridge University and Law at Leicester University.

She is the author of a non-fiction book, Deadlier Than the Male: An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing, about female crime writers from Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers to Ngaio Marsh. She contributes reviews and feature articles to many newspapers and magazines, is a regular broadcaster on TV and radio and tours regularly promoting her books at events and festivals.

Jessica Mann lives with her husband, an archaeologist, in Cornwall. Her latest book is The Mystery Writer (2006).

Reviews

[Virginia Tican · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an exciting and thrilling read. This is the kind of thriller I prefer. A straight forward murder mystery thriller (uncomplicated by psycho~babble about thwarted sub~conscious desires and childhood trauma causing the perpetrator to kill) just good old~fashioned family secrets that must nor see the light of day. The letters of Lady Artemis Bessemer, once an unacknowledged Princess of Horn, triggered all the excitement in this book. The reader will be treated to a world where England, then the foremost superior power in the world, and whose noble subjects, Princess Royal Vicky (Queen Victoria's first~born) and Lady Artemis (daughter of the Earl of Bessemer), were treated in contempt by~and~large by the German people. Artemis' letters will give the reader a glimpse of the bigoted mind~set about what is 'done' about the poor (that they are of no account contrary to traditional English medieval custom of noblesse oblige). Artemis in particular, was not good enough (and was disrespected even by the servants) specially when her husband was killed in an 'apparent' carriage accident, then she was as nothing. Lady Artemis finally had her revenge on those who tried to erase her and her son's birth right from the annals of history. This is a very good blending of history, a treasure and of course, murder. It is also the story of a sheltered well~educated woman steeped in pedagogy sans practical knowledge and experience, her rude awakening, her survival in a hostile and dangerous environment, her ability to adapt and plan her escape taking her son's legacy with her. On the other hand, there is also the woman who was murdered for trying to bring to the world Artemis' story and the Treasure of Horn. Plus another death, no less significant, before the killer is captured.

[Julia Ibbotson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novel uneven and, in many places, confusing. It divides the narrative between the events of the mid nineteenth century and the present day (possibly some years ago?) and revolves around a mystery of the disappearance of Charlemagne's supposed coronation regalia of 800 AD. It begins with a brutal attack on Margot Ellice who is writing about the life of Lady Artemis Bessemer, the morganatic wife the Prussian Prince of Horn in 1858, and is exploring the correspondence between Artemis and her sister Lady Clementine. Enter Tamara Hoyland who attempts to solve the mystery especially after Margot dies in a fire at her brother's house as she recovers from the initial attack. I found it somewhat confusing in the first half as the exposition was unclear and I struggled to work out the characters and events. The story swerves between the book that Margot is supposedly writing, the letters from Artemis on which it is based, and the investigations of Tamara on both what happened to Margot and what happened to Artemis and the historic regalia. An interesting premise, but it could have been narrated and developed more clearly, I felt.