Stephan M Arleaux

The Lady In Red Stephan M Arleaux

A woman's body is found in a museum gallery with an arrow through her chest, so all of the other visitors are locked inside while the crime is investigated. It is the noon hour in the Museum Of Art And World Culture in Oxford, England; home of the famous university of kings for a thousand years. The English spoken is naturally quite explicit. The date, May 23, 1953. The weekday, attendance is light; the attendees are scattered between two floors., and the few visitors still lingering among the curiosities of the great museum were suddenly startled a cry rings out from the second floor. And by the sight of one of the attendants running down the broad, central staircase, loudly shouting, "Close the doors! Let no one out! An accident has occurred, and nobody's to leave the building." Scrambling to Section II, the museum director discovers a college age young women dead with an arrow through her heart. An older woman hovers over her with her hand on the arrow, while whispering incoherent phrases in the young women's ear and offering incomprehensible answers to the director's questions. She is the only witness to the crime, or accident, as the case may be. How will the, 65 year-old Mr. Chief Inspector Doven unravel this mystery when this witness is apparently insane? In The Lady in Red the story breaks more ground with an in-depth study of the psychological interplay between the murderer, the victim and the witnesses. Although more quietly paced, this mystery presents many elements of a psychological thriller, blind ambition, narcissism, obsession and betrayal. There is a peculiar twist with the fact that two heartbroken relatives of the victim will sacrifice virtually everything to protect the murderer. This murder mystery actively engages the reader more than a romance or adventure because the reader becomes involved in picking up clues and ultimately predicting the resolution of the story. This book invites the reader to become part of the investigative team.