The Alchemy Fire Murder: a Mary Wandwalker Mystery (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781685031305)

Former Archivist Mary Wandwalker hates bringing bad news. Nevertheless, she confirms to her alma mater that their prized medieval alchemy scroll, is, in fact, a seventeenth century copy. She learns that the original vanished to colonial Connecticut with alchemist, Robert Le More. Later the genuine scroll surfaces in Los Angeles. Given that the authentic artifact is needed for her Oxford college to survive, retrieving it is essential.

Mary agrees to get the real scroll back as part of a commission for her three-person Enquiry Agency. However, tragedy strikes in Los Angeles. Before Mary can legally obtain the scroll, a young man is murdered, and the treasure stolen.

Murder and theft are complicated by the disappearance in the UK of a witch mysteriously connected to the scroll. While Mary's colleague, Caroline, risks her sanity to go undercover in a dodgy mental hospital, her lover, Anna resorts to desperate measures. These, and Anna's silence over blackmail, threaten the survival of the Agency. Mary teams up with the victim's brother to track the killer, and the real alchemy scroll. Solving crimes on two continents will involve a rogue pharmaceutical corporation, Janet the witch, the Holywell Retreat Center near Oxford, plus the trafficked women they support, a graduate school in California, and a life-threatening mountain-consuming wildfire. Can these inexperienced detectives triumph over corrupt professors and racist attempts to rewrite history? Can they remake their fragile family? Will the extraordinary story of Robert Le More prove a source of hope for today?

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: Oxford 1399, January, Prima Materia or

Mother Julian's Gift

CHAPTER 1: A Present Day Summons

CHAPTER 2: St Julian's College has a problem

CHAPTER 3: Who Stole the Alchemy Scroll?

CHAPTER 4: What has Been Split Must Be Reunited 3

CHAPTER 5: A Mixing of Bitter Substances

CHAPTER 6: Holywell's Vulnerable Clients

CHAPTER 7: Mary Takes Charge

CHAPTER 8: Like Treats Like

CHAPTER 9: Two Brits in Snowbound Los Angeles

CHAPTER 10: Strange Mixing

CHAPTER 11: Anna and Leni

CHAPTER 12: Into Darkness

CHAPTER 13: An Awful Lot of Blood

CHAPTER 14: They Call Him Cookie Mac

CHAPTER 15: Who's Looking for the Invisible College?

CHAPTER 16: Brother of the Victim

CHAPTER 17: Pursuit of the Scroll and the Murderer

CHAPTER 18: Stew

CHAPTER 19: Janet Holds the Key

CHAPTER 20: Janet's Story

CHAPTER 21: An Arsonist at The Old Hospital

CHAPTER 22: The Fire Between Them

CHAPTER 23: A Good meal Around the Fire

THE ALCHEMY FIRE MURDER

CHAPTER 24: Miss Wandwalker on the Trail

CHAPTER 25: The European History Foundation

CHAPTER 26: Mary and Sam

CHAPTER 27: Flying Apart

CHAPTER 28: Betrayal

CHAPTER 29: Anna with the Scroll

CHAPTER 30: Over Water, Back to Earth

CHAPTER 31: Reunion at Holywell

CHAPTER 32: Pizza After the Storm

CHAPTER 33: A Phone call to St. Julian's

CHAPTER 34: Trouble at St. Julian's

CHAPTER 35: St. Julian's in Turmoil

CHAPTER 36: Reading and Gardening

CHAPTER 37: Letters Across the Atlantic

CHAPTER 38: In the Doldrums

CHAPTER 39: Roberta Africanus

CHAPTER 40: Mercurius

CHAPTER 41: Coagulation

CHAPTER 42: Mer-Corp

CHAPTER 43: President of the Alchemy School

CHAPTER 44: Roberta Le More's Scroll

CHAPTER 45: Land of the Fire

CHAPTER 46: Confronting Demons

CHAPTER 47: Fire in the Valley

CHAPTER 48: Your host, Jez Wiseman

CHAPTER 49: Last Act in Oxford

CHAPTER 50: A Question of Trust