About The Book

When her young husband dies in a car crash Caroline Kent’s financial difficulties may force her to sell the family's Newport, Rhode Island, estate. Instead she makes the decision to turn Kenwood into the Inn at Kenwood Court, catering to wealthy visitors to the famous city.

With her mother-in-law Louise and their elderly cook Mattie, Caroline begins the task of learning to manage her new enterprise, a job for which her former stage acting career has not prepared her. While Louise is eager to help, Mattie is more concerned with pointing out the shortcomings of both Caroline and the new guests coming to stay.
The scene down Thames Street in Newport's downtown shopping area around the Brick Market, once the center of the colonial city.
The Cliff Walk as it passes The Breakers, the Vanderbilt estate, with a view of the Atlantic Ocean and the rocky coastline.
Caroline's best intentions and the bucolic atmosphere of the Inn at Kenwood Court are quickly threatened when the Hargreaves arrive from Boston to spend the weekend to celebrate a family wedding anniversary. Uncle Maurice enjoys taunting his family for their shortcomings, their avarice and their dependence on him. Tensions ignite, and murder is the shocking result of this deadly game.

Lt. Hank Nightingale of the Newport Police Department takes charge of the case, and Caroline is determined to help the handsome police detective solve the mystery before the killer can strike again. While Hank, disciplined in police work, looks for hard evidence, Caroline follows her intuition by using her intelligence and training as an actress. Together they make a formidable detecting team. Caroline even has her Dr. Watson, her mother-in-law Louise, with whom she tests her theories.
All the suspects are questioned and observed. Who had a motive? Who had opportunity? What part does the city itself play in the devilish scheme? When all the suspects are called together in Kenwood Court's grand salon for the book's final scene, all the clues have been laid before the reader. Who has been lying? Who has been withholding the truth? Will the answers surprise you? Or perhaps you, the reader, will have already worked out the solution.

Murder Stalks A Mansion: A Newport Mystery, quickly transports you to Bellevue Avenue, the Cliff Walk, Thames Street and the harbor, and of course to stately Kenwood, the fictional Newport mansion which is home to the Kent Family. The story is a classic country house murder mystery, complete with red herrings, baffling clues and a house full of suspects.
Inside the picturesque grounds of the Newport Casino, now home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, on Bellevue Avenue. The statue depicts English tennis great, Fred Perry.

Next in the Newport Mystery Series