The Face On The Wall Jane Langton by Jane Langton 9781784086640, 1784086649, 48a0b787-ad61-47fa-af91-b701c831aa6b, 48A0B787-AD61-47FA-AF91-B701C831AA6B instant download after payment.

**While trying to start a new life, Homer’s niece uncovers a murder

**

Life has not always been fair to Annie Swann. A bad marriage sullied her youth, but since her divorce she has made enough money illustrating children’s books to add a wing to her house. The new addition’s focal point will be a thirty-five-foot blank wall, where Annie plans an elaborate mural of the fairy tale characters who pay her bills. But as she paints, mysterious markings appear on the mural: first splotches, then a woman’s face, ringed with blond hair and covered in blood.

It seems to point to the disappearance of Pearl Small, a Harvard student who took classes from Annie’s aunt Mary. As Mary and her husband, professor and ex-cop Homer Kelly, look for Pearl, Annie continues painting, unaware that with each brushstroke, she marks her wall with another layer of evil.

### Amazon.com Review

Jane Langton's pen-and-ink illustrations, which decorate the pages of her books about retired Massachusetts detective Homer Kelly and his historian wife Mary, are as apparently simple--and deliciously deceptive--as her words. Even if your mystery tastes run to the tough and hard, you'll have trouble avoiding the warmth, sharp wit, and clever detection that animate this series. "Homer Kelly had been Mary's husband for a long time," begins a typical Langton paragraph. "He was a big man with a coarse gray beard and a rough head of hair like the thick fur of a dog. His impulsive enthusiasms had often led him into absurdities in the past, but half a lifetime with a sensible wife had mellowed him a little. So had his experience with violent criminals." It's art that gets Homer and Mary involved in their 13th adventure, when an 8-year-old boy with Down syndrome is found murdered near a wall that Mary's niece has been illustrating with characters from fairy tales. The missing, abused wife of a nasty property developer is also part of the mystery, which the Kellys unravel in a suspenseful and thoroughly plausible manner. Other Kelly outings available in paperback include *The Dante Game*, *Dark Nantucket Noon*, *Dead as a Dodo*, *Divine Inspiration*, *Emily Dickinson Is Dead*, *God in Concord*, *Good and Dead*, *The Memorial Hall Murder*, and *Murder at the Gardner*. *--Dick Adler*

### From Publishers Weekly