The Dreaming Damozel

Description for THE DREAMING DAMOZEL by Mollie Hardwick:

Trade is sluggish these days in Doran Fairweather Chelmarsh's small Abbotsbourne antiques shop. When she discovers an unsigned painting of the Pre-Raphaelite model Lizzie Siddal, she becomes more and more interested in the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly in Dante Gabriel Rossetti---painter, poet, and selfish and destructive lover of Lizzie Siddal.

Hope to prove the painting a work of Rossetti's, Doran embarks upon a search that soon becomes an obsession. A new friend with a strange name and a similar fascination with antiques adds fuel to the fire, which turns deadly when Doran and her husband happen upon the corpse of a young girl in a brook, dressed and positioned exactly like Shakespeare's Ophelia in Millais' famous Pre-Raphaelite painting.

As word spreads of her "discoveries," Doran's business revives, bringing more mysterious artwork and an ominous art lover. Another lethal enactment of a painting doubles the urgency with which Doran struggles to unravel the tangles threads before she too becomes a victim of the art of murder.

This is #6 in a Doran Fairweather Mystery.