The Player's Curse: A Bella Wallis Mystery

The Bella Wallis Victorian Mysteries #3

by Brian Thompson

Bella Wallis’s clandestine career as crime novelist Henry Ellis Margam is proving as successful as ever, but, in this latest nail-biting instalment from Brian Thompson, affairs of the heart are proving far trickier. Bella’s long and half-acknowledged engagement to Westland is beginning to strain as his own shadowy job, working for the government, continually takes him abroad. And then there’s the matter of his sister’s incarceration in a French nunnery about which he refuses to say a word. Bella determines that their future life together can only be resolved by getting to the bottom of Westland’s secret. Her journey takes her from the Oval, and a vicious curse laid on W.G. Grace, to the desolate moors of Yorkshire, on the trail of some decidedly dangerous women and a surprisingly chatty hermit. When—at opposite ends of Europe—Philip is kidnapped, and Bella taken hostage, the old team of Urmiston, Quigley and Murch must pull together to save them—with varying degrees of bad-mouthing and knockabout violence, but never without bright wit and oodles of panache.

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

He read English at Cambridge. Since 1973 he has written for a living as a radio and television playwright and a documentary film maker. He is also the author of several acclaimed biographies: A Monkey Amongst Crocodiles, Imperial Vanities and The Nightmare of a Victorian Bestseller.

Reviews

[Deanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bella travels to Yorkshire in the hopes of solving a problem that Westland finds to difficult to discuss, for a Londoner it's like being in a foreign country. When she gets into difficulties however Westland can't help as he's in a spot of bother himself. Fun read with the usual gang of characters.