{"id":6831,"date":"2025-11-25T08:06:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6831"},"modified":"2025-11-25T08:06:52","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:06:52","slug":"clara-mckenna-murder-at-cottonwood-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/clara-mckenna-murder-at-cottonwood-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"Clara McKenna: Murder at Cottonwood Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stella & Lyndy #7<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Murder At Cottonwood Creek<\/em> Is the seventh book in Clara McKenna\u2019s series set in the early 20th century, about Viscount \u201cLyndy\u201d Lyndhurst, a British aristocrat, and Stella, his American-born wife, the daughter of a Kentucky horse farmer who was murdered in an earlier book.\u00a0 It was an arranged marriage at first, but the couple grew to love each other.\u00a0 A shared love of horses certainly helped.\u00a0 This book takes place outside the series\u2019 usual setting of the New Forest region of England, as Stella and Lyndy travel to a ranch in Montana, owned by her mother\u2019s second husband, Ned Smith.\u00a0 There, Lyndy\u2019s father, Lord Atherly, pursues his passion for fossil-hunting, as he works with a paleontologist, Professor Gridley, to search for the fossils of prehistoric horses.\u00a0 Lyndy, a fan of dime novels, is excited about seeing the \u201cWild West,\u201d even though he is disappointed that the herds of buffalo have largely died out.\u00a0 Stella is glad to finally meet her stepfather and twelve-year-old brother.\u00a0 She has recently settled her father\u2019s estate in Kentucky and brought thoroughbred horses to the ranch.<\/p>\n

Things go wrong from the very beginning, as Lord Atherly goes missing when Stella and Lyndy first arrive.\u00a0 It turns out he has just wandered off, since he is unused to the vast sweeps of land in Montana.\u00a0 But then the man who guards the site of the dig at night, Franz \u201cHarp\u201d Richter (the nickname comes from the harmonica, or mouth harp, he plays) is found dead in a creek bed.\u00a0 The coroner insists the death is an accident, and the inquest court quickly agrees.\u00a0 But the sheriff is not so sure, and he allows Stella and Lyndy to investigate in secret.\u00a0 The coroner is the richest man in town, and it seems everyone is in debt to him.\u00a0 He also has political ambitions, and he and the sheriff belong to different parties.\u00a0 The two men hate each other, and Stella and Lyndy are caught up in their rivalry.\u00a0 Of course, they are sure the death was no accident.<\/p>\n

Fossils begin disappearing from the dig, and Professor Gridley\u2019s notebook is stolen.\u00a0 The professor suspects a rival paleontologist who is camped nearby and who published Gridley\u2019s paper as his own.\u00a0 There are several other suspects, including Gridley\u2019s assistant Terence, who is rude to everyone, a reporter who keeps showing up when he\u2019s least wanted, and a female photographer who carries a gun in her handbag.\u00a0 Just when Stella and Lyndy think they\u2019ve figured out who the murderer was, things take another turn.\u00a0 Terence, who seemed like the prime suspect for a while, ends up dead as well, and once again the coroner declares it an accident, even though there is even more reason to think his death was murder.<\/p>\n

Soon after Terence\u2019s death, Lord Atherly goes missing again, and this time the professor does, as well.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the sheriff thinks they disappeared because they were responsible for Terence\u2019s death.\u00a0 Stella and Lyndy are sure Lord Atherly and the professor had nothing to do with it, of course, and they decide to find the two men, and prove they\u2019re not guilty of murder by finding the real killer.\u00a0 Their investigation takes many twists and turns along the way.\u00a0 Every time they decide a certain suspect is the killer, that person is ruled out.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Stella\u2019s stepfather threatens to shut down the dig if the killer isn\u2019t found soon, because the murders will ruin his ranch\u2019s reputation.\u00a0 I will not give away any spoilers, but the solution proves shocking, with implications for future books.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed this book very much, even though it takes place outside the series\u2019 usual setting.\u00a0 I enjoyed reading about the search for fossils in the early 20th century, and about the species of prehistoric horses the characters find, even though, as McKenna\u2019s author\u2019s note explains, some of the species weren\u2019t found in that area until much later.\u00a0 Stella shares her father-in-law\u2019s passion for paleontology, and so does her mother.\u00a0 Lyndy is less enthusiastic about it, but I think his character develops more in this book than any of the others.\u00a0 He experiences culture shock and finds out his privileged background counts for nothing in Montana, where people treat him just like anyone else.\u00a0 He begins to realize what Stella went through when she first came to England.\u00a0 Lyndy also begins to learn to restrain his hot temper, which has gotten him into trouble before, landing him in prison, accused of a murder he didn\u2019t commit, in the previous book.<\/p>\n

The most sympathetic character in the book, as in the whole series, is Stella.\u00a0 She has a natural compassion and empathy, and a love of animals, especially horses.\u00a0 I missed her beloved mare, Tully, in this book, but Stella couldn\u2019t bring her from England.\u00a0 Instead, she finds another horse she loves.\u00a0 I also enjoyed the scenes between Stella and her mother.\u00a0 They had been estranged for a long time, because Stella\u2019s mother had gone off to start a new family, but clearly they still love each other and enjoy being together.\u00a0 I did not miss Stella\u2019s domineering mother-in-law, Lady Atherly, even though we are reminded of her because she keeps sending telegrams, wanting to know if Stella is any closer to producing an heir.\u00a0 The couple\u2019s childlessness is a thread that has run through the last few books, and it is not clear whether we will have a resolution soon.\u00a0 This is the first time, though, that Stella really seems worried about it.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend this book, and the whole series, especially to fans of Tasha Alexander and Dianne Freeman, who have series set in a similar time.\u00a0 Freeman\u2019s series also features a couple where the husband is a British aristocrat and the wife is an American heiress, even though Freeman\u2019s series has more humor than McKenna\u2019s.\u00a0 With McKenna\u2019s series, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary to start from the beginning.\u00a0 (I didn\u2019t.). This book could certainly be read on its own, as it has a different setting from the others, and it gives enough background information on the characters that the reader will not be confused.\u00a0 I look forward to reading more of Stella\u2019s and Lyndy\u2019s adventures in the future, especially after the new development that I will not give away.\u00a0 —\u00a0Vicki Kondelik<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stella & Lyndy #7 Murder At Cottonwood Creek Is the seventh book in Clara McKenna\u2019s series set in the early 20th century, about Viscount \u201cLyndy\u201d Lyndhurst, a British aristocrat, and Stella, his American-born wife, the daughter of a Kentucky horse farmer who was murdered in an earlier book.\u00a0 It was an arranged marriage at first, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[123,2362,10,122,162,2361,607,2363,273],"class_list":["post-6831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-clara-mckenna","tag-fossils","tag-historical","tag-horses","tag-kensington-books","tag-murder-at-cottonwood-creek","tag-stella-and-lyndy","tag-turn-of-the-century-montana","tag-vicki-kondelik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6833,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions\/6833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}