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This is a classic British mystery with all the modern twists you can fancy. The sleuths are Detective Superintendent Alan Markby and Meredith Mitchell, an independent woman who works for the Foreign Office but has fallen in love with Markby. The two are looking for a house where they can live after they marry. One weekend they visit the Vicarage in Lower Stovey. Markby has unpleasant memories of Lower Stovey. His first case as a Detective Inspector involved a serial rapist in this area, one he called the Potato Man. The rapes had stopped and the criminal was never found. Now a hiker in Stovey Woods has found some human bones and Markby is certain there is some connection to the twenty year old crime. Mitchell, reluctantly visiting the town again to look at the eminently unsuitable Vicarage, goes into the old church where she finds the body of a village woman. This triggers an investigation that will uncover old secrets and reveal old crimes as well as expose a current murderer. The setting is provocative. The village is small and dying. The church is no longer used on a regular basis. The school has been closed down and converted into cottages for people who want ³second homes² in the country. Still a hard core of villages remains, perhaps because they know nothing else, perhaps because they fear the outside world. In this hothouse environment evil can flourish and grow. Even those who live in this village know that something iniquitous lives in their village. The author includes a map of the village and the area around it which makes visualizing it so much easier. Markby and Mitchell are old friends if you have been following this series. They began as antagonists when they were brought together during a crime. Over the course of years they have learned to love each other, although there is still hesitation on both parts. Markby has a failed marriage in his past and is not sure he can succeed this time. Mitchell has been independent all her life and the thought of sharing that life and reducing her independence is frightening. All these hesitations are evidenced as they look for suitable homes but cannot find any. Markby is a skilled investigator who has few sparks of genius, few flares of intuition. He just toils along, examining the evidence, making and discarding theories, relying on his subordinates to do their jobs as well. But those woods haunt him throughout the story; he is convinced that this time he is going to find Potato Man. One of the lessons we learn from the conclusion of this mystery is that things change, that when we draw conclusions on what we see today and fail to take into account what it might have been like twenty years before, it is frighteningly easy to make mistakes and miss the significance of what is happening. For a good solid story which plays fair with the reader and focuses on two attractive and intriguing as well as flawed characters, you cannot go wrong with Ann Granger.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, January 2003
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