A woman and her nemesis are caught in a cycle of romantic intrigue in this seductive mystery by the Edgar Award–winning author of The Patient in Room 18.
Averill Blaine should have been married years ago, but Eden Shore stole her fiancé Noel’s heart. Eden, a fashion model, needed only a few weeks with Noel before he broke his engagement and proposed to her instead, but she never went through with the marriage. Years later, Averill has found a new fiancé, and nothing—not Eden, not even murder—will get in her way. Eden goes to Averill’s wedding in hopes of seducing Noel once more. As the two couples circle warily, death intrudes—in the shape of a suspicious airplane crash that kills Averill’s uncle. He is an expert pilot, but no amount of skill can stop the flames that leap from his engine as he crests 15,000 feet. Still, Averill and Eden are determined to say “I do,” no matter how many die on their way to the altar.
Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over a nearly six decade-long career. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she began writing in high school, trading English essays to her fellow students in exchange for math homework. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, and in the 1920s began writing fiction in her spare time, publishing her first novel, The Patient in Room 18, in 1929. With the follow-up, While The Patient Slept (1931), she won a $5,000 Scotland Yard Prize, and by the end of the 1930’s was one of the most popular female mystery writers on the planet. Before Agatha Christie ever published a Miss Marple novel, Eberhart was writing romantic crime fiction with female leads. Eight of her books, including While the Patient Slept and Hasty Wedding (1938) were adapted as films. Made a Mystery Writers of America grandmaster in 1971, Eberhart continued publishing roughly a book a year until the 1980s. Her final novel Three Days for Emeralds, was published in 1988.