Elizabeth Duncan’s tenth Penny Brannigan mystery, Remembering the Dead, takes readers to north Wales and the lovely rural area where Penny runs a spa with her friend, Victoria the town of Llanelan.

By now everyone in the area is aware of Penny’s propensity for uncovering details that are helpful to police in an investigation, so the amateur sleuth has the ear of the local detective when a tragedy occurs.

Her good friend Emyr is delighted to have custody for a few nights of a special chair given posthumously to the great WWI Welsh poet, Held Wyn, who was awarded the bard’s chair during the 1917 National Eisteddfod. After restoration, the chair is making its way to Wyn’s hometown and his museum with a reception by the Prince of Wales. But this stopover for a few nights means a special dinner party thrown at Emyr’s manor house. The unveiling of the carved chair after the meal is to be the highlight of the evening, but goes at once awry when the black cloth covering it is removed to display one of Emyr’s library chairs.

Penny’s been asked to coordinate the dinner party and is on the premises all evening when tragedy strikes twice. Besides the missing chair, she stumbles in the mist over the rain-soaked body of dying young man outside the scullery, who succumbs to his injuries. He’s the nephew of the spa’s receptionist, which gives Penny even more of a vested interest in uncovering what’s happened.

To unravel the threads, Penny will need to carefully explore a young witness and speak to her friend Jimmy, a former thief now residing at the local nursing home.
This will include bringing Penny on a brief trip to Ireland, with a surprising subplot.

Readers will be fairly certain they know who the culprits are from the outset, but it’s the masterminds behind the events of the evening that need to be outed.
With her books steeped in Welsh history and her lovely descriptions of the countryside, Duncan shows once again that Penny is a force to be reckoned with as she pulls together the disparate pieces that form the whole story.

A charming cozy for a series that continues to delight.