Lady Georgiana is home from her honeymoon with Darcy O’Mara after three months of marriage in The Last Mrs. Summers by Rhys Bowen. Upon Darcy’s getting called away from home on one of his secret missions for the government, Georgie is happy to join her best friend, Belinda, in exploring a property in Cornwall that Belinda has just inherited from her grandmother. The pair find the cottage to be highly rundown and decide to look for a hotel instead.
However, no rooms exist in this largely deserted stretch of the Cornish coast. So when Belinda is recognized by a childhood friend with whom she played during the summers spent with her grandmother, she accepts Rose Summers’s invitation to stay at Trewoma, the large estate where Rose is now mistress. This daughter of Belinda’s grandmother’s cook is rich now that she is married to Tony Summers, who inherited a fortune from his first wife, another of Belinda’s childhood playmates. Tragically, Jonquil, the first wife, died two years earlier in what Rose suspects to be a suspicious fall off a cliff after less than a year of marriage. Then on the second night of the ladies’ visit to Trewoma, Georgie hears a scream and runs to the room next to hers, only to find Belinda holding a bloodied knife and staring in horror at the naked stabbed body of Tony in Belinda’s bed. It doesn’t take long before the police arrest Belinda for the murder, leaving Georgie to solve the murder to free her friend.
In Bowen’s introduction to this book, the author announces that The Last Mrs. Summers was inspired by one of her favorite books, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Those who have read the American gothic novel will spot many parallels between the two books. But anyone who has not read Rebecca will still appreciate The Last Mrs. Summers for its own sake. The book contains many of the key elements found in a gothic novel, with an eerie setting, noises in the night, and secret passageways. I found it to be one of the darkest books in the series and personally prefer all but one of the other books to this one. Some other books in the series have gothic settings without being too scary or creepy, but I found this book to get disturbing at times.
One thing that I really missed in The Last Mrs. Summers was the vast cast of characters who quickly made me love them (or love to hate them). The only regular character besides Georgie who makes a significant appearance in the book is Belinda. And she has changed dramatically, having lost her carefree nature. I see potential in her new manner for some interesting developments in future books, but she is taking a while to get there. In the meantime, I missed getting to spend time with Queenie, Granddad, and Georgie’s mother. Darcy made a slightly larger contribution to the book, but I would have liked to see more of him in the book too.
The Last Mrs. Summers is the third book in the Miss Spyness series to be narrated by Jasmine Blackborow, who faced the daunting job of having to follow the great Katherine Kellgren when the latter passed away of cancer. I didn’t immediately connect to Blackborow, in particular in Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, the first book she performed in this series. However, in The Last Mrs. Summers, Blackborow shows new confidence and energy, starting to own this series for herself. I look forward to hearing how, in the future, Blackborow develops her own voice in relation to this series.
I enjoyed getting to listen to The Last Mrs. Summers, though I didn’t like the creepy details and missed getting to spend more time with our old friends. For those who like the gothic, this book will be enjoyable, but for the rest of us, the book is nice but not ideal. I give this book four stars.
