“She interviewed the living to understand the dead”
- Book: Mystery At The Old Mill
- Location: Cambridge
- Author: Clare Chase
‘Cozy’ mystery, or traditional murder / mystery, or perhaps a mixture of both! No matter how you choose to define this story, there is only one superlative to describe it – Amazing!
This is professional obituary writer and amateur sleuth, Eve Mallow’s, fourth case to solve and she has obviously arrived in Saxford St Peter with a certain amount of personal baggage she is hoping to offload, but which still comes back to haunt her every so often. Even so, this book works fine as a stand alone story, as the details of Eve’s past are revealed slowly on a need to know basis and the picture never feels anything but complete and up to date.
A great opening which drew me right in; a plot which just threw up one surprise after the other; and a rather satisfying ending that left me feeling full of hope, promise, and a job well done!
This multi-layered, suspenseful storyline moved along at a steady pace, with natural peaks and troughs in all the right places, enough to keep the atmosphere tense and me glued to the edge of my seat, wanting to turn the pages ever faster, as the bodies began to mount up and Eve’s suspect list grew in length. This fiendishly twisted plot was well constructed by an author consummate in the art of storytelling and skilled in the imagery of words. Great observational and descriptive dialogue lifted the characters from the page, making them three dimensional as they inspired my imagination, but unfortunately not my powers of deduction, as I failed dismally to spot the perpetrators until it was too late and they had already been unmasked.
The red herrings were spread liberally and seamlessly around the crime scene, and with so many people in this sleepy little village having secrets and personal hidden agendas, suspicion was liable to fall in any direction, sometimes being deflected to all the wrong places, as suspects sought to cover their tracks and draw attention away from themselves and onto others. The crisp narrative and dialogue was fluid, with plenty of gossip, a good deal of heart-searching and a liberal splattering of lighter-hearted moments amongst Eve’s effortlessly conversational questioning style, but nonetheless very concerted and focused investigations.
Author Clare Chase, expertly guides her amateur sleuth through this veritable minefield of lies and deceit, providing her a few close encounters of the scary kind – but is she deterred? – not on your life! Only as the investigation builds to jaw dropping, heart stopping climax, do events rather slew out of control, as we see Eve’s shields really down, exposing her vulnerability and inexperience.
True to the traditions of a well developed cozy mystery, the characters are every bit as important as the plot and the crime, and Clare has researched her small village community structure very thoroughly, before committing pen to paper and beginning to define and flesh out her sprawling cast of characters, in rich detail. This makes them very easy to connect with and become invested in, although there are one or two I probably wouldn’t want living too close me, and a couple of gossips I would try to avoid being alone with. There is some excellent character interaction and some quite strong emotional and family connections for Eve to unravel during the course of her investigations and of course, there are those who are not quite as innocent or nice as they would have me believe, but did I mange to spot them? – not on your life!
Eve is a middle-aged, ex-wife, and loving mother, who would stand up well alongside Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, or any of her more modern day counterparts, of which there are many. She has just the right amount of nosy neighbour tendencies, with the ability to sniff out a juicy murder/mystery, good powers of deduction in first building then whittling down a suspect list, and yet can stand up to serious scrutiny in her own right as a stalwart and trusted member of the community. She seems like a good and loyal friend to have and I look forward to following her new and blossoming friendship with the new man in her life!
Oh! And talking of sniffing out a suspect or two, I can’t end this review without mentioning Eve’s canine side-kick, Gus. What he lacks in physical size, he certainly makes up for in stature and wisdom, after all Eve does spend much of her time talking to him like an investigative partner and he is always a ‘go-to prop’ when she needs an excuse to visit a crime scene or chat to a suspect. To be honest, Eve might well have been toast in this particular investigation, if Gus hadn’t been the one to raise the alarm and set the wheels in motion for a rescue!
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