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DISTURBING THE DARK is filled with delightful characters, mouth-watering meals, plenty of romance and a strong sense of place. It is replete with interesting individual story lines; unfortunately, the story lines never mesh in a cohesive whole – they are each like separate strands of wool that never quite form a satisfying tapestry.
Maggie MacGowen is a documentary filmmaker from California who has brought a crew with her to make a film at her family's ancestral farm in Normandy. At the same time, there is an archeological dig going on. We also learn at the beginning of the book that during World War II, the town was occupied by a German squad of sixteen soldiers who were killed by the young women of the town in a particularly gruesome fashion. One of the young women turns out to be the Maggie's grandmother, Elodie Martin, matriarch of the family. The murdered Germans end up being buried on the farm, and are uncovered while Maggie's half-brother is digging a trench for a building project seventy years later. When the grave of the German soldiers is inadvertently discovered, the news is shared to the world via social media, Thrown into the mix: Maggie's romance with a French diplomat, her attempts to deal with her philandering cameraman Guido, visits by descendants of the German commander whose body was found and who are looking for treasure on the farm, World War II memorabilia hunters, European politics, and oh, yes, the murder of one of the archeology students.
And if it sounds a bit confusing, that is because it was more than a bit confusing. It was difficult for me to comprehend the family relationships – perhaps because this was my introduction to the series. The book does not really work as a stand-alone novel – there is quite a bit of back-story that is not revealed in the book, which definitely created some comprehension issues for this reader. They never did explain how and why Maggie was given up for adoption to an American family by her French mother. There is a list of Maggie's family at the beginning of the book which was somewhat helpful, but there was such a complicated history among the family members that it was very confusing to a reader new to the series.
The best things about the book were the description of the wonderful feasts that were served by Maggie's friends and family, and the haunting picture author Wendy Hornsby paints of the Normandy coast. The murder of the archeology student and its solution seems almost like an afterthought – it is disconnected from other elements in the plot, so the story seems a bit disjointed.
§ Phyllis Onstad has been a writer, editor, civil servant, teacher and voracious reader. She currently lives in the California wine country.
Reviewed by Phyllis Onstad, March 2016
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