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Book Summary and Reviews of A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch

A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch

A Burial at Sea

A Charles Lenox Mystery

by Charles Finch

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  • Nov 2011, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Charles Lenox, Member of Parliament, sets sail on a clandestine mission for the government.  When an officer is savagely murdered, however, Lenox is drawn toward his old profession, determined to capture another killer.

1873 is a perilous time in the relationship between France and England.  When a string of English spies is found dead on French soil, the threat of all-out war prompts government officials to ask Charles Lenox to visit the newly-dug Suez Canal on a secret mission.

Once he is on board the Lucy, however, Lenox finds himself using not his new skills of diplomacy but his old ones: the ship's second lieutenant is found dead on the voyage's first night, his body cruelly abused. The ship's captain begs the temporarily retired detective to join in the hunt for a criminal.  Lenox finds the trail, but in the claustrophobic atmosphere on board, where nobody can come or go and everyone is a suspect, he has to race against the next crime - and also hope he won't be the victim.

At once a compulsive murder mystery, a spy story, and an intimate and joyful journey with the Victorian navy, this book shows that no matter how far Lenox strays from his old life, it will always come back to find him.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. While Finch may not be the first to set a murder mystery at sea, he perfectly integrates the ships routines and customs into the fair-play plot." - Publishers Weekly

"The descriptions of life aboard a ship in 1873 are especially entertaining." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about A Burial at Sea was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Diane S.

A burial at Sea by Charles Finch
Once again Charles Lennox finds himself solving a murder, or rather two murders. This time on the ship Lucy, en-route to Egypt. Love these atmospheric understated mysteries and in this one we learn quite a bit about the lives of sailors, the dangers and the camaraderie as well as the political dangers of the time. Mid 1870's and relations were extremely stressful between France and England with both sides spying on the other and it is this time period that is covered in this entertaining mystery.

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Author Information

Charles Finch Author Biography

Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Charles Finch is the USA Today bestselling author of the Charles Lenox mysteries, including the most recent, The Woman in the Water (February 2018). His first contemporary novel, The Last Enchantments, is also available from St. Martin's Press. Finch received the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation Award, for excellence in reviewing, from the National Book Critics Circle. His reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago with his family.

Charles Lenox series order (as of 2015)

  1. A Beautiful Blue Death (2007)
  2. The September Society (2008)
  3. The Fleet Street Murders (2009)
  4. A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
  5. A Burial at Sea (2011)
  6. A Death in the Small Hours (2012)
  7. An Old Betrayal (2013)
  8. ...

... Full Biography
Link to Charles Finch's Website

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  • The Woman in the Water jacket

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