The Mystery of the Lady of the Manor

SECRETS AND DECEPTION: When a beautiful and elegant heiress, Miss Claire Pynchon, arrived in town to be the fourth Lady of the Manor at Scanlon Hall, she was an instant celebrity occupying the regal mansion and grounds of the historic estate after a two-decade absence of the founding family. Her presence brought about an excitement and promise of an imminent restoration of a Golden Age of the Scanlon Manor. Author Erin Kaine uses the entertaining voice of a 38-year-old widowed small-town police chief, a former scholar-athlete, harried father of a 16-year-old daughter, and a sophisticated but underachieving native son, to chronicle the startling events and terrible revelations in that summer when the Scanlons came back to Forest Grove. The whole town fell under Claire’s mesmerizing spell including Chief Tom Callahan whose quiet small town cop life gets shaken up by the reopening of a 20-year-old murder case that was called a suicide by his own father and predecessor as chief of police. He faced personal revelations and shameful cover-up where officials and even friends were trapped in its fog of deceit. But the biggest mystery of all that summer was the suspicion that the enchanting and charming Miss Claire appeared not to be who she represented herself to be. The veteran cop faced an agonizing decision to unmask her true identity – the woman with whom he was having a not-so-secret affair and with whom he had fallen passionately in love. A great read!