Lead Review (Hemlock Bay)
- Book: Hemlock Bay
- Location: Heysham
- Author: Martin Edwards
The novel is set in fictional Hemlock Bay, which is heavily inspired by Heysham in Lancashire. It is no. 5 in the Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mystery series.
It also has a Cluefinder at the back, which is a long-forgotten trope of Golden Age detective fiction, an entertaining addition to the storyline. It is enjoyable checking to see if the clues, woven into the narrative, have been spotted!
Basil Palmer is intending to murder Louis Carson. He doesn’t know him, which is an intriguing premise for a novel. He does discover that he runs a hotel and thus decides to assume a new identity (meet Dr Seamus Doyle) and enters the wealthy world at Hemlock Bay, where his target is based.
Rachel Savernake enters the stage and a kind of cat and mouse dance ensues, with her acute eye on proceedings. She is methodical sleuth and very little escapes her attention.
The author beautifully captures time and place (1930s) and the story is well-constructed and very readable.
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