I must admit my expectations for DEATH ON THE LIZARD were far less than what they should have been.  Death on "the Lizard"?  Hmmm... Was this one of those trite dime store novels with the predictable plot of 'the butler did it!'?  Thankfully not.  Robin Paige's historical mystery of the Edwardian England occupied by their delightful husband and wife, Lord Charles and Lady Kate Sheridan is far more than the typical whodunit.

DEATH ON THE LIZARD pertains to the period when Gugliemo Marconi established a wireless telegraphy station on the English peninsula known as "the Lizard."  He succeeded in being the first person to send a wireless signal across the Atlantic , now investors in his company were looking for some financial windfall.  Unfortunately, being a success, Marconi was also now the target of competing wireless companies who had not reached the same pinnacle, and the foe of the common people who abhorred the intrusion of his wireless station upon the tranquility of their little utopia.

Two accidents occur, threatening the viability of the company: two of Marconi’s employees are dead.  One, Daniel Gerard, was working on a tuner to solve the interference problem of competing signals.  His death could not have struck at a worse time, as the Prince and Princess of Wales were scheduled to visit the station in a fortnight.   Enter Charles Sheridan, by way of Bradford Marsden, a director of Marconi Wireless who is requesting Lord Sheridan's investigation into the deaths.  

Concurrently, Charles Sheridan's wife Kate, an author of novels under the name Beryl Bardwell, her imaginative alter ego, is being asked by Marsden's sister, Patsy, to accompany her to the Lizard.  She has plans to visit her friend Jenna Loveday, a widower who recently suffered the loss of her daughter Harriet to drowning.  Patsy sees Kate, who also suffered the lost of a child, as the ideal person to help her friend Jenna overcome her grief.

Kate, however, is not so inclined to get involved.  Jenna Loveday is not anyone she knows.  Comforting a friend in such circumstances was difficult enough; comforting a stranger, that was especially awkward.  She hopes her husband Charles will help her get out of this dilemma, but as he has his own planned trip for the Lizard, he agrees with Patsy.  So while he pursues his investigation of the Marconi employee deaths; Kate becomes acquainted with Jenna Loveday.

What the Sheridans discover are two accidents that apparently are anything but.  A missing tuner and notes from Gerard's work.  A new woman of suspicious character courting Marconi's easily-acquired affections.  A stranger on the Lizard whom Kate believes is a military intelligence officer with whom she and Charles are associated, but who introduces himself to her as a birdwatcher by a different name. 

Clearly there are mysterious happenings on this peninsula of England 's shores, and it’s all due to Marconi and his wireless telegraph.

Two aspects in DEATH ON THE LIZARD I found most impressive were the quality of the writing, the fictional characters blend in with the factual history of that time, place and people (almost as if they actually belong there), and the manner in which the plot was constructed.  Not only are the perspectives of Charles and Kate Sheridan offered, the reader also sees this mystery of theft, murder, and international intrigue unfold through the eyes of Jenna Loveday, Bradford Marsden, Andrew Kirk-Smythe, and the little girl Alice, whom Beryl envisions as a fairy when Kate sees her before anyone else, but in actuality was a friend of Jenna’s daughter Harriet.  She was present when Harriet drown, and she has witnessed some of what transpired at Frenchmen’s Creek – where Harriet died and where a mysterious yacht it moored.

DEATH ON THE LIZARD provides one with a multi-dimensional perspective on a historical mystery that is more than simply a murder requiring a sleuth to solve.  It is bigger than that, stretching beyond the coastline of England like Marconi’s wireless stretching over the Atlantic Ocean .  There is something for everyone who enjoys a good book: entertaining characters, an unconventional plot, historical education, and something of substance upon which one can chew their literary teeth – the ramifications of progress upon the status quo.