Diana J. Febry

If you like old villages, country gossip, and some wild driving, check out this charming story. A great Detective story! A new discovery of old bones, buried near an oak tree in a forgotten field, drives Chief Inspector Peter Hatherall and Detective Inspector Fiona Williams down a road of village skeletons. The clues revealed by the village characters, after hours of interviews and footwork, bring the reader closer to old stories and places. Murder and mayhem follow an elite group of land owners.... Barriers of class are broken to hide secrets. Sometimes a crime is beyond understanding, but it affects all those touched by the act in some emotional way. The detectives try to understand what happen as they weave their way through bizarre behaviors. Peter also deals with his own personal skeletons. He tries to come to terms with his past and pave a way for a better future with his family. I enjoyed reading this who done it, and watch as a couple of detectives find their way to work together.… (meer)

I kept thinking throughout this novel what a strange pair these detectives are. Fiona Williams is given to flights of imagination and Peter Hatherall is at times an unmitigated disaster, and an extreme liability to his partner. They are constantly coming up with unlikely scenarios particularly related to the motives for the murders they are investigating. Both have domestic problems and in Hatherall's case these frequently impact on his ability to work. Hatherall appears to be often on the brink of dismissal.

In the working out of the plot there are some extremely interesting characters, including Bunny, the ex-actress married to the Earl, Gladys who also sees herself as an ex-actress, a friend of Bunny's, and is married to one of the murder victims. (For me she came across as a bit over-drawn and much younger than she in fact is.) In an effort to provide a series of red herrings, the author comes up with a considerable range of sub-plots.

By the end there are three bodies resulting from linked elements in the plots.

A good read.… (meer)

A debut title and the first in a series. The author has gone on to write more than a dozen titles, including five more in this series.

During a big storm, a large tree falls over and reveals a skeleton. There is no problem in identifying the body as there is a bracelet that identifies her as a girl who had gone missing twenty years before. It seems most likely that she had been working at one of the local riding stables but nobody is able to remember her.

After her body is identified her twin brother and a cousin both turn up in the village. DCI Peter Hatherall and his offsider DC Fiona Wilson try to track down all who might have some knowledge of what was happening twenty years before. A mixture of local gossip and a set of old photos point the way for them.

While the story is very readable, and most of the i's get dotted and the t's crossed by the end, there are signs that this is a debut novel - for example there are a number of characters who come to nothing, and side-plots that have little significance. Peter Hatherall predictably has a curmudgeonly boss who threatens to take the case away from him if he doesn't get results "soon", and one of the suspects plays golf with someone higher up the chain than Peter Hatherall. Peter has domestic issues, a problem daughter, and a tragedy in the past, that all add dimensions to his character.

I'm looking forward to reading the second in the series.… (meer)