Friday Memes: Death Among Rubies by R. J. Koreto

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Hal took a step back to contemplate the flesh tones on the canvas, the lovely pinks and peaches of his model's skin, the copper sheen of her hair lit to flame by the afternoon sun as it poured over the white robe that left one shoulder tantalizingly bare. He smiled in satisfaction and resumed painting.

Friday 56: 

"Mrs. Sweet? We're very sorry to disturb you, but - oh!" Mrs. Sweet was slumped in her chair with her jaw and eyes open and a box of candy on her lap. Mallow could see a hole in the bodice of her dress, and what appeared to be dried blood surrounding it.

This week I am reading Death Among Rubies by R. J. Koreto. This is the second in the Lady Frances Ffolkes Mystery series. I got this one to review from NetGalley. Here is the description from Amazon:

Lady Frances Ffolkes is incensed when she finds out that her dear friends Gwendolyn and Thomasina have been subject to vicious threats. Promising to uncover their attacker, she travels with them to Kestrel's Eyrie, the fabled estate belonging to Gwen's family. But soon Frances faces an even greater problem, when Gwen’s father, a powerful diplomat, is stabbed to death with his prized ruby dagger.

Frances, with her loyal maid June Mallow at her side, jumps right into interrogating the estate's numbered guests: a charming Turkish diplomat with a habit of sneaking off into the night, a brash American heiress with lofty dreams of becoming mistress of the Eyrie, two gossiping widows with their own scandalous secrets, and Gwen's own aunt tasked with keeping the affairs of the estate in order among the chaos of the investigation. But as the case unfolds, Frances's righteous conviction might just be the very thing that leads danger--and even more death--to her own doorstep.

Old sins do indeed cast long shadows in Death Among Rubies, a delightful closed-room mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie and the second in R.J. Koreto's effortlessly charming historical series.