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Philip Dryden is a reporter in a small town within sight of Ely Cathedral. Formerly a reporter in London, he moved to the fens when his wife was seriously injured in a car accident and she was in a coma for several years. Now she has come out of the coma and is in intense rehab and has come a long way in a year or so. Dryden is an unlikely hero; he is really not a brave man, yet he goes to great lengths to test himself and prove that he can face up to his demons. For some reason he does not drive or own a car but has a long-standing relationship with taxi driver Humph who drives a rusty old Capri, and whose greyhound bitch always occupies the back seat. Humph is usually listening to his language tapes, but he is a good sounding board for Dryden. The story opens when Dryden returns to a scene he had reported on ten years previously. The Army and the Ministry of Defense had relocated the villagers from the small hamlet of Jude’s Ferry because of military maneuvers they needed to conduct. At first the Army intimated that perhaps the villagers might return, but as time passed everyone knew that was not going to happen. As the Army practices their shelling of the hamlet an errant shell exposes an unknown cellar beneath one of the buildings. Upon investigating the basement, a skeleton is found hanging, his hands tied. Suicide or murder? Dryden is a good investigative reporter and he is going to run with this story. The lives of the villagers, their whereabouts and habits are all subject to intense scrutiny by the police, the military and most of all by Dryden. As he interviews many of the former inhabitants he gets a sense of the village, the idiosyncrasies of the people and how the relocation has affected their lives – for good or for ill. There really are two stories here – what happened in the last days of the hamlet and what is currently happening now that the skeleton has come to light. The author deftly moves back and forth between the two periods, fleshing out the story as well as the many and varied characters. Dryden, his wife and Humph are well developed as are the many lesser characters.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, February 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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