Faith Sibley Fairchild has been a favorite amateur sleuth of many for more than twenty mysteries (including short stories). Now she and her husband, the Reverend Tom Fairchild are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary with a trip to Italy. While the couple is flying over the Atlantic, Tom takes the opportunity to catch up on his sleep, Faith to reflect on how the pair met, their whirlwind courtship, and how they almost didn’t make it down the aisle when someone tried to kill her, more than once. Faith was a caterer in Manhattan in the early nineties and the daughter of a minister. She and her sister Hope swore they would never marry a man of the cloth, so when Faith falls in love at first sight with a guest at the wedding she is catering she is shocked to learn he was the presider at the ceremony and the pastor of a small church in Aleford, Massachusetts. Now Faith will be leaving everything she loves in the city to step into a bucolic life she cannot even begin to imagine. The wedding will be at her uncle’s Long Island estate, The Cliffs, but months before the wedding, the longtime housekeeper is murdered in her aunt’s bedroom and then Faith narrowly escapes death as a parapet falls from the roof, something she letter learns was not an accident. When she is almost pushed in the path of an oncoming subway, she knows someone has their sights set on her, but why, Faith cannot imagine.
As always, Katherine Hall Page writes the perfect modern day traditional cozy. This peek into Faith and Tom’s pasts and how they came to be part of the patchwork that is Aleford provides even more depth to their stories. A surprising culprit makes this a bittersweet tale and the mysterious life of a young woman working in Faith’s Manhattan catering firm gives more credibility to Faith’s curiosity and willingness to go out of her way to help her friends and family. Here’s to twenty more years for Tom and Faith and twenty more (at least) Faith Fairchild mysteries.
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