Wings Bestsellers Literary Fiction: M.M. Kaye: Three Complete Mysteries

by M.M. Kaye

Book Overview

A collection of three novels by the famed British mystery writer features Death in Kenya, Death in Zanzibar, and Death in Cyprus. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 051710024X
• ISBN13: 9780517100240
• Release Date: December 1993
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Length: 646 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Old-fashioned Mystery and Romance

If you like old-fashioned mystery and romance set in an exotic locale, this trio from M.M. Kaye is fabulous. One of the great writers of her era, her lush descriptions of exotic locales she and her husband visited as she followed the drum come alive once again in these atmospheric novels of mystery. Zanzibar, Kenya, and Cyprus are all remembered, Kaye sharing her impressions of those magical places before time would change them forever. In "Death in Kenya" young Victoria Caryll returns to a family estate in the Kenyan Rift Valley as it recovers from a bloody Mau Mau uprising. Eden Debrett is the man who left her for Alice. But Alice's murder will bring mystery and danger to the lush and romantic locale in one of Kaye's finest tales. "Death in Zanzibar" has a light and entertaining feel and a very likable heroine in Dany Ashton. The characters are colorful and fit right in to the time period. Lash is a young man-about-town who slowly comes into his own helping Dany with a ruse during their trip to Zanaibar and the House of Shade, where the mystery of why her hotel room was broken into and her passport taken deepens into murder and more. We get to see Zanzibar as Kaye saw it, through Dany's eyes. This is a very fun and entertaining mystery with the values and mores of a bygone era. It is the kind of old-fashioned mystery and romance not written anymore, and perhaps never as well as M.M. Kaye did. Dany is sweet and endearing as she shows old-fashioned bravado during the course of the mystery. She will emerge from her mother's shadow and come into her own just as Lash does. A growing romance develops between she and Lash, of course, in this fun and highly enjoyable mystery which is perhaps my favorite. Set in an enchanting Cyprus that Kaye realized was too good to last, Kaye made the sun shine bright once again on it in "Death in Cyprus." Places like Port Said, Fayid, Limassol, Nicosia and Kyrenia come alive and are filled with beauty and adventure. It is a wonderful adventure and romance touched with danger. Sunlit garden verandas and dinner tables overlooking a crystal sea of jade and emerald are described in such a manner you can almost taste them like a fresh purple grape from the vineyards of Nicosia. The setting is ripe for romance, but danger as well, and Kaye brought together both in one of her finest mysteries. Young and lovely twenty-year-old Amanda Derrington will board the S.S. Orantares and meet a group of people who will play an important part in her life in ways she could not have imagined. Before she leaves the ship for a stay in beautiful Cyprus a murder will occur that will reach the white-walled houses of Cyprus, shining bright against the sea. Only Amanda and Stephen Howard, a painter who carries a gun and may be more than he seems to be, know that it was murder, and not a suicide. That knowledge will put her life in grave danger. The romance of Stephen and Amanda, or Amarantha as he calls her, is a very old-fashioned one wh