She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth

She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth

A noblewoman seems to come back from the dead, and Miss Silver must help verify her identity

Anne Jocelyn has been dead for some time. She and a friend were killed trying to escape the first German assault on France; her husband, Phillip, survived to bring back her body for burial, after which he joined the war against the monsters who slaughtered his wife. That was three years ago, and now Anne Jocelyn has returned to England.

Looking and talking exactly like Phillip's wife, she insists that he mistook her friend's body for her own, and buried it by mistake. After three years hiding from the Nazis, she has finally escaped to come back to him. He doesn't believe her, but she doesn't care. As far as she's concerned she is Anne Jocelyn, and the dead woman's riches are her own. Only the brilliant Maud Silver will be able to divine who should be believed.

Miss Wentworth is a first-rate storyteller. --The Daily Telegraph

Patricia Wentworth has created a great detective in Miss Silver, the little old lady who nobody notices, but who in turn notices everything. --Paula Gosling, author of the Jack Stryker mystery series

Miss Wentworth's plot is ingenious, her characterization acute, her solution satisfying. --The Scotsman

Patricia Wentworth (1878-1961) was one of the masters of classic English mystery writing. Born in India as Dora Amy Elles, she began writing after the death of her first husband, publishing her first novel in 1910. In the 1920s, she introduced the character who would make her famous: Miss Maud Silver, the former governess whose stout figure, fondness for Tennyson, and passion for knitting served to disguise a keen intellect. Along with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, Miss Silver is the definitive embodiment of the English style of cozy mysteries.