A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage

Posted by Rebekah
Categories: Fiction, Mysteries, Older Readers, Review
Tags: Mark Twain, Quick Read, Roy Blount Jr.

Our rating:

John Gray, a farmer, and his wife Sarah, live more-or-less happily with their grown daughter Mary in the little town of Deer Lick, Missouri. Mary and Hugh Gregory, the son of a neighbor farmer, are in love and are about to be engaged when John Gray finds out that his rich brother left all his money to Mary. “What’s wrong with that?” you ask. Well, John’s brother hates Hugh. Wanting to secure wealth for himself, John Gray tells his daughter she can’t marry Hugh. Then, while John Gray is walking one day, he finds a well-dressed stranger lying in the snow, but no footprints are to be seen. The stranger calls himself Mr. George Wayne, but Mrs. Gray soon finds out that he’s really Count Hubert dee Fountingblow. Spurned on by greed, Mr. Gray tries to make a match between the count and Mary, but Mary doesn’t love him. In the midst of this, David Gray is murdered and Hugh is accused and imprisoned. Who really killed David Gray? Will Hugh be proved innocent or guilty?

I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. Shall we say, predictable? It does have some humorous parts. Mark Twain made some jabs at Jules Verne’s stories and his source of ideas. It’s not bad, just not edge-of-your-chair material. In fact, you can even put it down in the middle of it and walk away, but there’s not much danger of that. It’s not very long.