What the Dead Leave Behind

I've been meaning to read Rosemary Simpson's debut novel What the Dead Leave Behind (#932) for quite some time.  Set in New York City during the Great Blizzard of 1888, it seemed the perfect antidote to the never-ending heat of a Florida summer.

Heiress Prudence MacKenzie waits in vain for her fiance to arrive at her home with the final legal papers related to their impending marriage.  When instead his body is discovered the next day on a park bench, it is assumed that Charles Linwood was accidentally killed by a falling branch.  Prudence's father was a prominent attorney and judge; his will tied all her legal and financial affairs up contingent on her wedding to Charles taking place within ninety days of his death.  Now her greedy stepmother has total control of both Prudence's fortune and her life.  Charles was never the love of her life, but he was her ticket out of being under her stepmother's thumb.  When his childhood friend arrives in New York to attend the funeral, Charles' father confides in him that his son's death might not have been accidental at all.  Geoffrey Hunter is perfectly positioned to investigate with his law degree and Pinkerton background if only he can speak to the grieving fiancee...

On the whole, I found this mystery to be interesting, but Prudence's character vacillated between almost succumbing to a laudanum addiction to dull her grief and the clear-headed rationality and knowledge of the law her judge/father taught her growing up.  She's eager to join up with Geoffrey's investigation, but somehow she keeps failing to mention the attempts made on her life, and the suspicious deaths around her.  It did seem to drag on a bit with some of her eye-roll inducing decisions, but that's probably just me.

Oh, and did I mention that I found the cover art ridiculous?  Superimposed photos of a dark brunette (when Prudence is repeatedly described as almost blonde) standing out in the snow of what we must assume is a snow-covered New York City park wearing a fur-trimmed velvet jacket, lace summer gloves and twirling a summer parasol.  Turn to the back cover to get a more realistic idea of what New York looked like in the aftermath of that awful 1888 snow storm.