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Sunday, March 13, 2016

Finished: The Lake House (Morton) Another pretty good Kate Morton page-turner, though this one didn't keep me quite as engaged. Once again the story centers around the secret mystery in a great manor house in England. The Edevane family, Eleanor, Anthony and their three daughters, Deborah, Alice and Clemmie, are living what seems to be a carefree life at their lake house in the country when finally a son is born, Theo. Theo is twelve years younger than the youngest daughter and the light of every one's life! Unfortunately, though, Anthony is plagued by flashbacks from World War I, where he went through the horrors of the trenches. He is particularly disturbed by the horrific memories of his dearest friend, Howard, like a brother to him, who decided to desert the army to be with the young French woman and her child who he has fallen in love with. Though Howard is an officer, he decides to help them escape, but the plan is foiled by the crying baby. Howard is then shot as a deserter. :-( Anthony forever blames himself, and after young Theo comes along, his bursts of "shell shock" violence get worse as he insists on making the baby quit crying. Meanwhile, Eleanor has stuck by her husband and kept his secret since neither of them want their girls to know of his illness. One night, during the annual festival at the lake house, complete with dancing, drinking and fireworks, Eleanor sets a plan in motion that affects the family for the rest of their lives. When they all wake up in the morning, baby Theo is gone. Kidnapped? Murdered? Wandered off? The mystery is never solved. Well, not solved while Eleanor and Anthony are still alive. Seventy years later, a young female detective, Sadie, has been given a month's leave for getting too emotionally involved in her own case of a young mother who left her child alone in an apartment and disappeared. The young mother's own mother suspects foul play, but the police write it off as a runaway mother. Detective Sadie Sparrow feels otherwise, but her insistence on pursuing the case gets her a suspension. When she goes to spend that time off with her grandfather, she gets caught up in the old cold case of the missing Theo Edevane. Her grandfather lives close to the estate where the tragedy occurred so many years before, Loeanneth. Sadie delves into the old library clippings about the kidnapping/possibly murder and discovers that the middle daughter, Alice, is still alive at 86 and the prolific detective novelist, A. Edevane. When Sadie finally gets in touch with Alice, and her thirtyish assistant, Peter, the pieces all start to fall together. Alice has spent years thinking she was the cause of Theo's disappearance because she'd written a wild story about the kidnapping of a toddler from his rich parents as a teenager and shared it with an estate gardener who she realized was in terrible need of money. All these years she has thought herself responsible, but Sadie and Clive,  a retired police officer who was the youngest member of the force during the Edevane case, figure everything out when Alice gives them permission to enter Loeanneth and go through her father's notebooks and her mother's letters. They all go from believing that perhaps Anthony Evedane accidentally killed Theo in a fit of shell shock, with Eleanor helping him to cover it up, to finding out the real truth...which for once, I might add, is a happy ending. :-) It took me much longer to finish this book because I just couldn't get quite as engaged, but all in all, though a little bit predictable, it was still a good Kate Morton book....and I will probably read more of hers! :-)

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