Ravensea Castle #2
Above the village of Monkwell, Yorkshire, sits Ravensea Castle, home of the Asquith family since 1138. The current family includes herbalist Nora, her sister popular TV actress Tamsyn, mead-brewer brother Will, amateur historian and father Arthur, Rolf the English Mastiff, Ruffian the cat, and several ghosts, including the ghost of ancestor Sir Percival. What more could one ask for in a castle-turned-B&B?
It’s almost Halloween and Will is hosting a Viking Fest at the castle to promote his mead. Hundreds of visitors in Viking costumes turn up, along with actual B&B guests: a history professor (with the hilariously appropriate name of Tweedy) and a group of ghost hunters filming an episode of Britain’s Got Ghosts (just in time for ghostly Halloween appearances). Tweedy convinces Arthur to let him search Ravensea for a lost Viking treasure while the ghost hunters hope to capture images of the ghost of Rusla, a Viking shield maiden known to haunt the battlements.
Is there a connection between Rusla and the lost treasure? Why do the professor and ghost hunters seem to know each other? Did the professor steal the hint about the Viking treasure from a former student? Who actually knows about the treasure and might be willing to kill for it and cheat the family out of it?
The plot thickens when someone locks Nora and some of the ghost hunters in the castle dungeon, another ghost hunter is poisoned, and someone is murdered in the castle during Viking Fest. DI Finlay Cole, Nora’s boyfriend, can’t take the case because he’s too close to the family. That doesn’t stop him from encouraging Nora to look for clues she can share with the police. She also needs to determine if there really is Viking treasure on Asquith land and, if there is, find it before word leaks out and the place is overrun with treasure-hunters. I learned that in England, the person who finds treasure has to split it with the landowner – which is why the Asquiths are worried about people searching their land illegally and stealing the treasure. Not only are they liable if someone gets hurt, they could literally lose a fortune to unscrupulous treasure hunters (if the treasure really does exist).
This light-hearted cozy, the second book in the Ravensea Castle series, is so interesting that when I started reading it, I put it down and bought the first one (Bodies and Battlements) so I could read the books in order. I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a minute of the fun! My knowledge of the Whitby area is limited to Dracula by Bram Stoker (one of my all-time favorite books) so I loved the descriptions of the coastal villages and Yorkshire in general. In addition to running the B&B, protagonist Nora is a herbalist who grows herbs and uses them to make teas, lotions, soaps, etc. Her Castle Apothecary provides soaps and lotions to the B&B guests as well as local stores. I enjoyed the descriptions of her garden and workroom and hope there is more detail about making soaps, etc., in future books.
I admit I am a sucker for stories with dogs, cats, ghosts, and Halloween, so these elements jumped out at me when I was browsing galley books to review – and I’m so glad I found this fun series! — Cathy Akers-Jordan