Book Review: Face Down Under the Wych Elm

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Face Down Under the Wych Elm     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Kathy Lynn Emerson
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Historical   Woman Main Character
Series: Lady Susanna Appleton # 5
St. Martin’s, Dec 2000, $22.95, 256 pp.

With her husband now dead, Susanna Lady Appleton of Leigh Abbey in Kent controls all the lands that her deceased spouse used to manage. Susanna is wealthy and has more freedom than most women even under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Susanna refuses to marry because she is sick of being under the control of a male as she has all her life.

Instead, Susannah agrees to become the mistress of her neighbor Nick Baldwin. She accompanies him when he travels to Meidstrom where he has a case pending before the summer Assizes. When they arrive in town, Susanna is shocked to learn that her husband’s former mistress Constance Crane and her relative are being held on charges of witchcraft. Knowing the woman is not a witch and feeling some sort of weird obligation, Susanna sets out to prove the innocence of the two women. In doing so, individuals who want the two women burned at the stake begin to look closely at Susanna’s behavior.

The fifth installment of the Face Down series provides a very lucid picture of upper class life in Elizabethan England. Kathy Lynn Emerson does a splendid job of showing the power of superstition even as an age of enlightenment spreads across the land. The mystery is also well written but FACE DOWN UNDER THE WYTCH ELM belongs to Susanna, a woman rejecting the place society demands she accept

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner