dustjackets.com
Series: Colonel Primrose #7
About the author: Leslie Ford is a pseudonym of Zenith Jones Brown, 1898-1984. She also wrote as David Frome and Brenda Conrad. Also see this Book Scribbles blog: Leslie Ford's Fall From Grace.
Major characters:
- Grace Latham, our narrator and protagonist
- Bill Latham, 17, her son
- Joe Anders, wrangler/guide
- Cecily Chapman, 23
- George Pelham, 33, has his eyes on Cecily
- Steven Grant, a.k.a. Sam Graham, Cecily's former fiancé - is he dead or alive?
- Mrs. --- Chapman, Cecily's grandmother
- Colonel John Primrose
- Sergeant Phineas T. Buck
Locale: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Synopsis: Cecily Chapman was engaged to Steven Grant. He contracted infantile paralysis (e.g., polio) and as a result, apparantly commited suicide in a car crash. Her grandmother, Mrs. --- Chapman, organizes a horse pack trip through Yellowstone National Park to help Cecily forget. The trip includes her friend, Grace Latham, and her son Bill Latham; George Pelham, and guide Joe Anders. Pelham was a co-worker of Grant, and pressures Cecily to marry him, which she doesn't want at all.
In the park they encounter a ranger by the name of Sam Graham, who turns out to be Steven Grant - believed dead for three years. Cecily is torn between her love for him and anger at his deception. She then comes to a terrible realization: If this is Steven, then whose body was in the car wreck three years ago?
Review: Thoroughly enjoyed this one, and it serves as a virtual travelogue of Yellowstone as well. Some portions of the writing I didn't understand too well, such as the episode of "discovering" Steven Grant in the ranger cabin - after I reread it carefully I was able to follow the action.
If you enjoy mysteries set in national parks, murder on a pack trip through a national park is also the theme of Eleven Came Back by Mabel Seeley (1943).
No comments:
Post a Comment