Published 2005 by Allison & Busby
ISBN 978-07490-9135-5
343 pages
Book 2 in the Lake district mysteries.
Genre: crime
Keywords: Lake District, UK, old murder case, anonymous letters, village living, Daniel Kind, Hannah Scarlett, family feud, old garden, folk lore, murder, adopted children, hunting the truth
Grade 4/5
Will I read more of this author: yes, I find Hannah a very likeable person, a professional dealing with problems that prevent her from doing her work,
According to the book this is 3 months after the first book, Daniel and Miranda are getting used to the village life having finished renovating their house, Tarn Fell, their Paradise, so Daniel turns his attention to the garden with a weird lay out. Daniel is a historian and starts to investigate. In the Graveyard he found the graves of the couple who built the house, they died on the same day, one year after their son had died in the Boer war; it said on the stone ‘they died of a broken heart’.
Daniel is happy he has left the academic rat race of Oxford and TV shows, he wants to write. Miranda so far has been busy with the renovation of the cottage ordering around of the builders, plumbers and electricians. She is a journalist and is being head hunted to a new magazine in London.
Louise is Daniel’s big sister, a lawyer and lecturer, after a bad break up from a boyfriend, she comes to get over it, so she and Daniel can reconnect. They feel both connected and the last of their family, so they must stick together.
Daniel is very interested in continuing his conversations with Hannah about their father, Ben. He was Hannah’s mentor when she started in the police force, she is now in charge of reviewing un-solved cases. Ben retired and died soon after. Daniel and Louise had cut off all connection with Ben, as their mother would have looked on any connection as a deep betrayal. But Daniel wants to get to know his father.
Hannah’s unit gets an anonymous tip about a brutal murder from years ago, Ben had not worked that case. Daniel’s hypothesis is that there are similarities between they work of a police detective and that of a historian.
There is a reference to another book (Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy Sayers) ‘a love story with detective interruptions’, I would say about this book: a novel with detective interruptions.
Here is a lot of writing about living in a small village, the only thing to do is sleep around; the purpose of solving unsolved cases even when the victims have moved on, in particularly if an unsolved murder like here, also about anonymous letters, having been adopted as children.
Miranda was adopted and has not had the courage to find her birth mother, she does not want to be rejected a second time.
Two homosexual men hide their sexuality by marrying and have children, because that is acceptable behavior.
There is a lot of talk about the Lake District folk lore, both in this book and in the first ‘The Coffin trail’; I wish I had read about that before we went there. Explanations in the first book ‘coffin trails’, how from far away villages without a church they brought the dead to churchyard, the Sacrifice stone where in pagan times innocent young girls had been sacrificed and slaughtered for the good of the community.
In this book among the older generations Daniel’s Garden is known to be a garden with a message, more than 100 years old, but nobody has changed it, out of respect. But what is the message? Is it a curse? About death? Or is it just a regular garden but different? There is also a message in the vegetations used in the garden, part poisonous.
In one of the conversations between Daniel and Hannah she mentions the new cold case investigation that involves a landscape business, Hannah mentioned it - by mistake? Or by design? Daniel takes the bite and gets involved, researches, investigates, and finds leads and help with the investigation.
Again the detecting is like a side line in this book which I altogether found entertaining and nice to be reminded of places we visited in September 2022. I like especially Hannah.
Quotes:
To learn the art of relaxation (p 46)
Men and women think differently, behave differently. They compartmentalize their lives in a way that few women do (p 125)
Photos of some places mentioned in the book:
Driving on the western shore of Lake Windemere passing Far Sawrey before coming to Hill Top where huge amounts of tourists prevent parking unless you made a parking reservation! We had not done that:
We continued along Esthwaite Water to Hawkshead, there we did find parking and here I bought the two Martin Edwards books I have really enjoyed, but reading them only after coming home I may have missed things!
The place in the book where Tina and her kids were at the time of the murder:
So much to photograph!
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