The Secret Staircase - A Review

 Review

THE SECRET STAIRCASE by Sheila Connolly
The Third Victorian Village Mystery 

Kate Hamilton has gathered together a board to revitalize the small town of Asheboro, Maryland. Her plan is to recreate the town into the Victorian village it was when Asheboro was in its heyday. Feeling an affinity towards Henry Barton, the man who made Asheboro into a booming Victorian village, she decides to start by renovating his mansion, located on the outskirts of town. While Kate knows that unforeseen circumstances happen, she's in for a shock when she and her contractor find a body behind a wall. At least it appears to have been there since the 1880s and not someone newly deceased. But who is it? And how did it come to be there? As Kate and her team research Henry and his family, finding more questions than answers, it's soon obvious that the dead man on the secret staircase is just the start of her renovation problems.

Kate has several mysteries to work through in the third Victorian Village Mystery: whose body was left behind the wall in the 1880s, who put it there, who is the modern day killer, and will she ever realize her dream of revitalizing her town. I love how Kate calmly and methodically researches everything she needs to reach her goals, from finding her committee and construction crew, to figuring out what kind of man Henry was and learning his true history. I found myself most intrigued by the story of Henry and his mysterious Mary and became even more fascinated as the details began to emerge.

This is not a warm and cuddly type of mystery. Most of the characters have an edge, something that just doesn't sit right, or are downright repellent. Life, however, is not always a fuzzy feel good adventure, remember, as Cat Stevens said, there's a lot of bad and beware. THE SECRET STAIRCASE is more real in its honesty. I truly enjoyed this book and the many puzzles it provided.

THE SECRET STAIRCASE weaves together the renovation dreams of Kate Hamilton with the story of Victorian magnate Henry Barton with an ingenious plot that focuses on the present day while stories of the past seep through.