Death in Cyprus: 3 - Softcover

Kaye, M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312263090 ISBN 13: 9780312263096

Verlag: Minotaur Books, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Twenty-year-old Amanda Derrington is on an extended cruise with her uncle when she decides to make a short trip to the sun-washed island of Cyprus. But even before the ship arrives in the port, there is a suspicious death. Once the passengers reach the island, it soon becomes clear that the death was in fact an act of murder. What Amanda had meant to be a pleasant excursion quickly takes a turn for the worse in M. M. Kaye's Death in Cyprus, a classic novel of suspense and romance by one of our most celebrated writers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

M.M. Kaye was born in India and spent much of her childhood and adult life there. Author of several mysteries, she became world famous with the publication of the international bestseller The Far Pavilions. She is also the author of the bestselling historical novels Shadow of the Moon and Trade Wind. She lives in England.

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Death in Cyprus

A Mystery

By M. M. Kaye

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 1984 M. M. Kaye
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-312-26309-6

CHAPTER 1

Amanda had not been really frightened until she found the bottle. Horrified certainly: shaken by incredulity and shock, but not with fear. Not with this cold, crawling apprehension of evil ...

One minute Julia Blaine had been alive and talking in that high, hysterical, sobbing voice. And almost the next minute she was dead — sprawled on the floor of Amanda's cabin in an ungainly satin-clad heap.

It had all happened so suddenly, and without a word of warning. Or had there been a warning? Somewhere in the happenings of the past few days or weeks had there been nothing to suggest that such an ugly and fantastic thing might possibly occur ...?

* * *

Amanda Derington had been staying with an aunt at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone while her uncle and guardian, Oswin Derington of Derington and Company, looked into his business affairs in the simmering stock-pot of the Middle East.

A night raid on London during the autumn of 1940 had left Amanda an orphan, and she had been subsequently and arbitrarily annexed by her Uncle Oswin. This despite the fact that there had been several sympathetic aunts only too ready and willing to take charge of the child. But then Oswin Derington, a bachelor and a misogynist, had little or no opinion of any of them, and a great many opinions on everything else: including the upbringing of children.

The head of Deringtons — that ubiquitous firm whose name and multitudinous activities crop up like measles spots wherever the shoe of the white man has managed to gain a foothold — was a stern moralist in whom the blood of Calvinistic ancestors ran strongly. He was, in addition, successful, egotistical, selfish and frequently inclined to pompousness, and it was his firm conviction that the majority of his fellow-men led sinfully immoral lives. Anyone hearing him holding forth on his favourite subject might well gain the impression that, in the mind of the speaker at least, the entire population of the world was given over to sinful and riotous living with the solitary exception of that pillar of uprightness, Oswin Greatorex Derington.

Uncle Oswin apparently included Amanda's aunts among the ranks of the ungodly, for his action in assuming sole charge of his brother Anthony's only child was prompted as much by a desire to save a tender brand from the burning, as to put into practice various long-held theories on the correct method of bringing up the young. And Anthony having left a will in which he had lightheartedly named his brother as trustee and sole guardian of his daughter, there was nothing that anyone else could do about it.

The outlook for Amanda might well have been bleak, had it not been for the fact that she had inherited her mother's physical beauty, together with much of her father's gaiety and courage. Three useful legacies that a series of strict boarding schools, constantly changed, and her Uncle Oswin's selfish and Victorian ideas on the correct behaviour of young ladies, had done nothing to diminish.

In the years that followed on the heels of Hiroshima, and saw a startling shrinkage of those pink-tinted portions of the map that depicted territories governed by or owing allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain, the trading empire of Derington and Company saw many changes. A number of branches, mainly in the Far East, had been compelled to close down with unexpected suddenness. But other and newer branches had sprung up to replace them, and there came a time when Oswin Derington (whose harassed but resourceful med

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Minotaur Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312263090
• ISBN 13: 9780312263096
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 222
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar