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The blurb...
England, 1942. While reluctant wartime detective Bob Robbins is enjoying a few days’ holiday on the North Devon coast he becomes involved in a shooting incident on a derelict farm. An elderly farmer lies injured, and then disappears. A young man is found shot in the chest. Bob reports the incident to the local police force, but they are so over-stretched with extra duties he finds himself in charge of the case. In urgent need of assistance, Bob requests the help of the young police recruit Laurie Oliver. They take rooms at ‘Peony Villas’, an unusual sort of guest house run by an ex-West End diva, where a troupe of London actors are in residence, and where Bob soon finds himself involved in yet another peculiar mystery..
My review...
Bob is an old widower with dodgey knees, who talks to his dead wife. He is also a retired detective inspector, who has been pressed back into service due to manning issues arising from the war. Bob's on his holidays, birdwatching near Bideford, when he hears a shotgun. He walks up the hill to a local farm and sees a young farm hand dragging an injured possibly dead farmer. He gets told to clear off and does so, until he hears a pistol shot. Bob returns to the farm to find the young farm hand dead but no sign of the old farmer. Bob reports it to the local and very unco-operative police and ends up getting pressganged into taking on the investigation. He sends for his trusty young, educated side kick Laurie Oliver and settles in to his accomadation. He ends up staying at a sort of hotel where the guests are all travelling actors and singers. The neighbour is a grumpy curmudgeon and the chef is suffering from PTSD from the Great War. He may also be supplemtenting rations with something a little different!
So it's a very good set-up. Plenty of potential suspects, conflict and comedy opportunities. The investigation iteslf centres around who will inherit the two farms that the missing farmer worked.
I can appreciate that we needed an insight into who would be the beneficiary if the old farmer was indeed dead. However, a problematic issue, for me, was the vast family history trees involved in working out how several of the protaganists were connected. A case of "my next door neighbour's aunty's best friend was married to Bob's daughter" type of thing. I often had to read back over what I had already read to try and gain some clarity. This was exacerbated by the fact that at least three of the characters had another alias and one character had had additional three identities. I would recommend having a notepad and pencil at the ready.
These quibbles not withstanding, now we get onto what the author does well. She does great job of evoking the rural west country during the war period. You can really feel yourself settling down in the pub drinking scrumpy because there is no beer left as the army lorries thunder through streets built for carthorses.
She also excels at painting a picture of a era where time stretched out rather than rushes by as today. It is a setting that is just as alien to us today as Star Wars is.
The highlight with regards to mystery is not the whodunnit but the search for the missing (dead?) old farmer and why cant they find his corpse?
The comedy elements are well played out too. Loved the cat wrangling cook. The rescuing of the Inspector from the farm privy on a motorbike was a favourite also.
There is a lovely relationship between senior, experienced, worldly wise D.I. and junior less experienced but better educated D.C.
A gentle, comedic, immersive mystery that plonks you firmly in the west country eighty years ago. Last of the summer wine meets Foyle.
Selected Quotes...
"Hearsay usually carries a lump of disagreeable truth. Never overlook hearsay, even when you cant use it in evidence."
"She says I look like Jimmy Stewart, the Hollywood actor.'
"Does she indeed? tell her how much a British bobby earns, see if she changes her mind."
"He followed his grumpy new relative through a jumble of pint-wielding elbows to an arched bar decorated with horse brasses and government issue respirators"
"Twenty minutes until supper: time enough to raid a broom cupboard for a nine-millimetre pistol while the cook was boiling the potatoes."
"Mr Pots," she murmured,
"whatever are you doing with your cats?' Then she recalled the game pie he'd served the night before...."
"Mrs Healy's mouth was pinched tight like a miser's purse."
About the author...
J.G. Harlond (Jane) grew up near the sea in the South West of England. She studied in Britain and the United States, obtaining a BA (Hons) in Cultural Studies, an MA in Social and Political Thought, and teaching qualifications. For many years, Jane worked in European international schools and wrote school textbook material. In 2010, she gave up an enjoyable, safe, and successful job to also write fiction.
Jane’s fascination with historical novels began while still at school, when she would read anything by Jean Plaidy or Daphne Du Maurier instead of doing her homework. Later, she moved on to a much wider range of books, but particularly liked Dorothy Dunnett, John Le Carré, and Mary Wesley: three very different authors whose well-chosen prose weaves intrigue and sharp descriptive detail into compelling stories. What interests her most about fiction is the manner in which a reader can experience the universal emotions of love, hate, jealousy, and greed through invented narrative, and the way it demonstrates how real and fictitious characters’ life choices affect and are affected by real events and other people’s actions. Jane’s novels also consider the influence of genetic inheritance, showing how family traits, physical appearance, and personality can follow through or skip and re-emerge in different generations.
When she’s not writing, Jane is busy looking after an aging but spirited horse, trying to keep a small but demanding garden in order, and doing her best to stay up to date with what her family is doing in various parts of the world. Travel, it seems, is something of a Harlond family trait.
