SUSANNAH STACEY – Goodbye, Nanny Gray. Superintendent Bone #1. Summit, US, hardcover, 1988. First published in the UK by Bodley Head as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey. Pocket, US, paperback, July 1989.

   When Phoebe Gray inherits the bulk of a rich man’s estate, the dead man’s brother has a right to be surprised. But then Miss Gray disappears and is later found dead. Was sge murdered? Or had she only bumped her head and wandered off to die? Supt. Bone needs to know.

   This is his debut, and with cares at home mixing in with his devotion to his job, I wouldn’t mind calling this a “cosy” at all. Details in the case, time, day of the week, etc., are kept rather vague, however, and deliberately so, for it all comes down to that.

–Reprinted from Mystery*File #14, July 1989.


Bibliographic Notes:   This was the first of eight outings for Supt. Bone (no first name known). Under the name Elizabeth Eyre, the two female collaborators wrote another six novels set during the Italian Renaissance. The leading protagonist in those books was a knight and/or a soldier of fortune by the name of Sigismondo da Roca.