Blog tour: The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald by A.J. West
This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.
‘1917. As the Great War rages on the continent, Everest Macdonald is summoned to her father’s deathbed and entrusted with a final urgent request: she must uncover the truth behind the murder of her uncle, the celebrated Victorian actor William Terriss, a crime that has haunted her family for twenty years.
‘In 1897, Terriss was stabbed to death outside London’s Adelphi Theatre, a killing that shocked Victorian society. The murderer was swiftly arrested and confined to Broadmoor, the case declared closed. Yet years later, a sealed package of evidence passed to Everest by her dying father casts doubt on the official verdict and the haste with which it was reached.
‘Drawn back to wartime London, with her husband and children left behind, Everest begins her investigation, following a trail that leads her into the world of late-Victorian theatre, where fame and fortune mask obsession, envy and cruelty.
‘With time running out and her father’s strength failing, Everest must uncover what really happened on the night Terriss died, and shed light on the unsettling legacy he left behind…’
In The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald, by A.J. West, the eponymous character, a well-to-do middle-aged woman in 1917, is urged by her dying father (known as T.H.) to investigate the murder of his brother/her uncle, the actor William Terriss, outside the Adelphi Theatre in 1897. While fellow thespian Richard Archer Prince was quickly apprehended and sent to Broadmoor for the crime, there remain unanswered questions about William’s life and death.
Her interest piqued, Everest gets to work, visiting the scene, asking probing questions of some interesting people who were around at the time, and reading the rather hair-raising personal accounts of her father and aunt (William’s wife Isabel, who only outlived him by a year). In the process, she discovers all manner of family secrets which complicate the picture of what happened that fateful night – with some help from some unlikely quarters.
The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald is such a fun, irresistible read! There are new twists at seemingly every turn, and the tone is generally light without downplaying the more serious aspects of the period the story covers.
Going in, all I knew about William Terriss was that he was a murdered Victorian actor who reportedly haunts Covent Garden Underground Station (relateable: who among us, faced with the choice between jostling for the lift and climbing the 193-step spiral staircase, hasn’t felt stuck down there for eternity?). It was therefore a delightful surprise to find how much of this story was based on real events and people – William’s life and personal connections are a rich seam the author mines to maximum effect.
William really did have a niece called Everest Macdonald, and her fictional counterpart has an entertaining, irreverent narrative voice I never tired of. She’s inquisitive, impervious to shock, and observant – although she does have a squirm-inducing habit of forgetting her carpet bag on trains which, luckily, her more organised assistant Clare compensates for. In fact, the only woman character who comes close to the image of the delicate, swooning middle-class lady of this period is Everest’s cousin/William’s daughter Ellaline, and even her nervous demeanour belies some steel.
A particular revelation, though, is Isabel. In life, it was easy to dismiss her as William’s submissive wife, who stayed at home in Barnes with their children while her husband gadded about in central London. However, her diary divulges that she was actually very resilient and resourceful – she had to be, having had to survive more or less by herself when William attempted to establish himself as a sheep farmer in the Falklands, and then a horse-wrangler in Kentucky – and even trod the boards herself before she was married.
As we learn from the writings of Everest’s father T.H., these weren’t William’s first forays abroad. T.H. recounts his time as superintendent of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in India, where he had a wife and child (new information that Everest takes in her stride) and William joined him for a time. Events there, and the pair’s eventual ignominious escape, lead them to believe there’s a curse on them, adding a supernatural element to the mystery. West doesn’t candy-coat the characters’ colonial mindsets or the brutalities they committed or witnessed, just as he doesn’t lose sight of the fact that in 1917, London is experiencing a new kind of warfare from above.
As befits a story with the glamorous, seedy world of the theatre at its heart, there’s a dramatic climax where all the characters are brought together at the Adelphi Theatre, 20 years to the day of William’s murder. The twists and revelations keep coming right up to the end, including a monumental one I hadn’t seen coming at all – well-played indeed!
The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald is an entertaining and addictive historical murder mystery.
