Part of Series
When a woman turns up drowned on the grounds of a royal estate, Leeds sergeant Keen Dunliffe is hoping it's just a case of a drunken skinny-dipper who fell and hit her head. But when the woman turns out to be a historian whose specialty is English royalty and politics in the eighteenth century and who was attending a conference at a local university, it's too much of a public relations nightmare to take lightly. The mystery deepens when two secretive men from the Met show up to ask Keen to befriend a colleague of the dead woman's—an American college professor named Dr. Jillie Waltham who was also at the conference—in the hopes that she can shed some light on the victim's life and work. Since tagging along with Jillie means he'll be able to spend some time with his twin sons, who are living with his ex-wife and her fiancé in London, he's not that unhappy to have the assignment. But simple drowning or not, with two such high-ranking government officials interested in the case but unable to tell him why, Keen, known for his rebelliousness and bad temper, is liable to get into more trouble than ever before his investigation is finished. A literary, character-driven, and complex mystery, Kingdom of Lies is Lee Wood's debut of a wonderful new series featuring Sergeant Keen Dunliffe and Professor Jillie Waltham.
Author
N. Lee Wood is the author of Faraday's Orphans and Looking for Mahdi, both published by Gollancz/Vista in 1996. She sold her first ever novel in Romania and hasn't stopped being published since. She is a frequent visitor to British and European conventions, and travels extensively from her home in Paris. She is married to Norman Spinrad, who shares her enthusiasm for Europe in general, and Romania in particular. N. Lee Wood is the author of "Looking for the Mahdi (Ace, 1996), "Faraday's Orphans (Ace, 1997), and "Bloodrights (Ace, 1999). "Looking for the Mahdi was selected as a "New York Times Notable Book and was also short listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.- The author's blend of sociology, feminism, and science fiction is reminiscent of such classics as Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness (Ace, 1969), and Sheri S. Tepper's "The Gate to Women's Country (Doubleday, 1988).
