Category: Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Ronald M. James
ISBN-10: 0998175609
Type: Fiction
Pages: 324
Copyright: October 8, 2017
ISBN-13: 9770998175607
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
The story takes place in 1923, Orange County, CA, and is a family saga turned sour by greed. An LA homicide detective, Sidney Snipes, soon discovers the case has taken a direction he never saw coming.
“Harrington Manoris James at his very best” —Publisher’s Weekly
Book Synopsis:
A murderer stalks the orange groves of 1923 Southern California. Detective Sidney Snipes is called to the Harrington Manor when retired Colonel Peter Wescott Harrington is found slumped over his desk by his family. Snipes entrusts the sensational new crime fighting technology—Fingerprint Analysis to find a fierce fiend.
Just when he though he had the murderer cornered, a neighbor discovers a grave in the orange groves; an unsolved missing person's cold case files. That case has haunted the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for three years. The evidence in the missing person's case rumples Snipes proficient sleuthing skills as the leads take him in circles. Then to add to the muddying discord, another Harrington turns up dead, apparently murdered in his sleep.
But when a sinister child’s Jack-in-the-box, seemingly from the grim reaper himself, materializes on the Colonel’s desk, the detective is bedeviled more than he cares to admit. Nevertheless, Snipes had enough moxie to send fingerprints to every city where his suspects had ever lived. The leads take Snipes in a direction he never saw coming. Within days, he's shocked to his eyebrows by the results; the identity of the murderer befuddles his mind. Alas, the oldest Harrington son, Shep, supposed wife, had a mock wedding to him in Manhattan, New York, and her plan was to kill the whole Harrington clan for their wealth.
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
Once upon a time, in a land destined to become synonymous with fantasy, Mrs. Gwendolyn Beazly shoved away from her kitchen table, leaving her breakfast uneaten.
Her next-door neighbor, Ruth Rutledge, watched with widened eyes. Maybe, she thought, she shouldn't have told Gwendolyn about the unfortunate mailman, then she noticed the euphoria in the other woman's face, and was sure of it.
Mrs. Beazly paused as she sprinted out of the kitchen. Glancing down at her dress, she smoothed the material. But her news was too important to spare the time to change. She touched the tip of her finger to her tongue and scrubbed at the droplet of scrambled eggs that had fallen on her bodice when she'd thrown her fork into her plate. She popped on the first hat her fingers touched from the hat stand as she headed for the front door.
She signaled to Ruth to close her front door while she grabbed her bike from under a lean-to shed. Ruth was all but forgotten as Gwendolyn hopped on her bike. She raced away from her home as if Satan was desperately trying to seize and drag her essence into his abominable abyss.
She pumped each bike pedal with increasing speed. She was on a mission. She would dole out her tidbits of tasty scuttlebutt in order of importance and priority. Friends and neighbors could wait to hear about the accident. She would inform the prodigious Harringtons’ estate first.
She felt every one of her fifty-five years as she pumped the bike up a slight incline. The tweedle of the robins, the scent of orange poppies, and clusters of white alyssum, which she usually cherished, was ignored as she weaved around the pitted street. Being a widow who savored the delicious taste of gossip as it left her tongue, she had important news to spread.
She maneuvered her bicycle from the paved county road, and held on tight to the handlebars. Traveling down what could be considered at best - a red-rock gravel lane, held her full attention. One moment of distraction and the treacherous booby traps, which were nothing more than wicked potholes, would see her task ended. She would have given anything for the yellow brick road that Dorothy sashayed along, but it wasn't there—yet. Against her better judgment, she glanced at the row after row of orange trees proudly standing erect for miles. The cycle under her suddenly threatened to throw her to the ground. Her whole body shook as the bike shot through several more potholes. She clung to the handlebar with one hand as she fought to get her hat out of her eyes. She almost cried out as a stab of pain thrust into her rump. Her determination to reach her destination never faltered.
As she pedaled around another pothole, Mrs. Beazly concluded that a Chicken Little variety disaster had struck her quiet world. In her simple life, fresh news that dripped with Hollywood intrigue spelled calamity.
Professional Reviews
Harrington Manor
BN Reviewed by Michelle Stanley for Readers' Favorite.
Harrington Manor is a terrific mystery by Ronald James. Shep and Reggie are impatient for their father, Colonel Harrington, to die so that they can squander their inheritance. Their wish comes true when the Colonel is found dead, but their celebration is short-lived. Detective Snipes suspects foul play and gets on everyone’s nerves with his brash interrogative manner. He already has a suspect in mind, and the butler is not off the hook. The detective introduces the latest fingerprinting technology to help solve the case. A toy Jack-in-the-box left by the killer is one of the few leads that the lawman has. The body of a missing neighbour is found, only fueling the trauma that the family faces. When the will is read, Detective Snipes realizes just how vindictive the family members can be, and is baffled by another twist that the case takes.
Harrington Manor by Ronald James was a very suspenseful mystery which kept me guessing as to the identity of the killer. Although I had my suspicions, the author included twists which made me scrutinise the characters a bit more. I liked their interesting personalities, and thought Ronald James nicely highlighted the good, bad and ugly temperaments of his cast. I especially liked Elena, who added her own brand of humour to this engaging mystery. Harrington Manor is set in the 1920s, giving it a nostalgic feel, aided by historical information. The dialogue was lively and unforced, and there was never a dull moment in this delightful novel.
Harrington Manor
Amazon review: A nice mystery of the classical type.
By Katerina - See all my reviews
This review is from: Harrington Manor (Paperback)
The story is taking place in Orange county in the beginning of the last century. A family with a military retired father and four children so different from each other. The oldest son is arrogant and wants the property to sell it and make a life in New York with his snob friends, the second son is a quiet character that follows his older brother, the only daughter is not sure to have grown up yet and the youngest brother is the only one really interested in the farm of his parents. The quarrels and the balance kept from the strong father is so nice described. But the father is found dead!! And he has not left the inheritance the way the rest of the family thought. There are surprises and secrets revealed. But there is still no real clue about the father's murderer. The story gets even more complicated with two more murders, a new and an old one.
The story is so nicely built I couldn't leave the book down. The author manages to transfer us so nicely to the atmosphere of that time and as a reader it is not difficult to dislike the oldest son and his wife and sympathize with Orson and their mother. The ending is quite surprising and not predictable. A really nice read.
Harrington Manor
Amazon review…An Old Fashion Mystery
By Babs
Harrington Manor (Paperback)
Written in the style of Raymond Chandler, the reader follows the exploits of Detective Sidney Snipes, a West Coast version of the taciturn Phillip Marlowe in his steady pursuit of a cunning murderer. Set in the 1920s, Snipes uses his instincts and the latest crime fighting technologies to track the killer to his inevitable yet surprising end. One that we will not disclose. Ronald James casts both his victims and heroes in a mystery that will entertain, amuse, and captivate the reader. Highly recommended.
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Reviews for "Harrington Manor"
Reviewed by Michael Hartnett
3/17/2018
Much More than a Fine Mystery
Harrington Manor by Ronald M. James is at once a terrific exploration of family dynamics, a charming and eagle-eyed evocation of 1920s California, and a smart, well-plotted murder mystery. Family patriarch Colonel Peter Harrington is quite the entrepreneurial visionary looking beyond the endless rows of orange groves he cultivates toward the real estate in and about Hollywood’s burgeoning film industry. As the Colonel describes the ill-founded perceptions of his son Shepp, “Shepp and his East Coast friends call us yokels, but we’ve been taking those land-hungry Eastern pests like a Chinese laundry.” The Colonel’s integrity, industry, and business acumen serve as not only the foundation of the Harrington family and its wealth but also as the cornerstone to the wonderful architectural edifice that is this novel: Harrington Manor richly develops the pasts of its characters even as James keeps an eye on the future.
As with all families, the manor has its share of unlikeable types but the good nature and wit of the Colonel, his youngest son Orson, and the brilliant and mercurial neighbor Emily give the novel a tremendously buoyant readability. Plus, the romance novelist Sara allows James to seamlessly present alternative, penetrating perspectives on the complicated family dynamics by contributing trenchant observations throughout. The southern California lifestyle of the early Twentieth Century is depicted with James’ exquisite sense of detail. While some of that outlook derives clearly from careful research, the author so casually and comfortably inhabits the period that quiet considerations like this one from Sergeant Crawford ring authentically: “After five minutes went by, the sergeant realized he was racking up a sizable phone bill for the county, probably approach a dollar . . .”
While the first half of the novel is all family intrigue, the second half is a fascinating and richly rewarding murder mystery. The presence of Detective Snipes serves as a grand, earthy, coarse counterweight to the more privileged characters inhabiting the upper rooms of the manor. The twists and turns that bound across these later scenes reveal as much about the social fabric and corruptions of the time as about the characters the reader has increasingly embraced. Harrington Manor is one of those fine novels that is much more than a murder mystery: it is fine period drama that captures the greed and vision from a hundred years ago that still haunt us today.
All in the family – A review of the novel ‘Harrington Manor’
“It’s miraculous how the shallow can injure in such a profound way” - Anna Jae
A family is in many ways reminiscent of a fruit bearing tree, you have the strong trunk that is the matriarch or patriarch supporting the weight of many that are dependent on it. And just like with trees, all it takes is a single rotten member to spoil everything and bring down the whole family along with it. So it becomes critical to identify & weed out the troublemaker at the earliest.
Author Ronald M. James’s novel ‘Harrington Manor’ takes you to 1920’s California and into the heart of murder mysteries and other sinister criminal frivolities happening within the vast expanse of a land owned by a wealthy family. The Harrington family is headed by the patriarch with the army background, Peter also known as the Colonel, his wife Corrina and their four children, Sheppard, Reginald, Margot and Orson; they are as different from each other as it gets. While the elder two sons, Shepp & Reggie are always at loggerheads with their father to gain control over his vast finances, Margot is still in the process of discovering herself and ironically it’s only the non conformist son, Orson who shows any interest in carrying forward the farming business of the family. But when a couple of Harrington members start dropping dead, it raises a lot of questions and accusations fly thick & fast across warring family members which soon piques interest in the local law enforcement agency. Detective and not inspector Sidney Snipes enters the scene and starts an investigation which reveals such terrifying truths to the Harrington family as it does to the reader.
Ronald’s writing has this charming prose that will hook you in with its poetic brilliance hardly a sentence into the book. The narrative intervenes smoothly with the back stories of each of the characters along with that of the main story, doing full justice to both. All members of the family, including the butler Charles have been given enough space for us to explore their personalities in detail. There are small things that go a long way in creating the perfect atmosphere the author wants the reader to envision and one of these things in this book is the careful selection of the words and the general vocabulary which is consistent with the background and the time in which the story is set in.
Almost half way mark into the book and after the occurrence of a major event, the book shifts into a different gear and from there on, the pace and the mood of the book changes quite dramatically. The writing, especially when it comes to dialogue writing deserves special mention; the back and forth snappy dialogues between the main players are a definite highlight. It is also a masterful ability to be able to show each character’s personality by modulating their dialogues in order to create a separate & unique identity for each of them. You can in fact almost picture these characters as actors in a movie mouthing these dialogues with different accents and slangs.
One understated element of this murder mystery novel is the abundance of natural humor that is ever present in these lines, it’s never forced humor for its sake but rather it comes across effortlessly because of the differences and quirks in each character. You will be surprised at how often you will find yourself smiling and chuckling away as you are reading some of these passages. The investigation and interrogation scenes involving detective Sidney Snipes are some of the best scenes in the book. The editing too is top notch and the plot twists and turns will leave you amazed and you will never be sure of who the actual culprit is till it is revealed to you at the end.
There are a lot of individual sequences which when combined together makes this novel fully worth your time. The characters, the slick prose and the snappy dialogues all combine to make this a memorable work. I recommend this book not only to mystery lovers, but also to anyone who wants to read a well written book. And the only spoiler I will give you is that it’s a murder mystery novel about a wealthy family with a butler and no, it’s not the butler.
Taylor Reigler moves to Indiana in order to reopen a campground she inherited. She finds decades of grime, waist high grass, and a few resident ghosts.
