Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for this ARC from a favorite author of mine. I have read all of Alys Clare's Hawkenlye and Aelf Fen series with pleasure. This series is a bit different for me, and I seem slow to warm to the period, although the characters have improved since Book #1.
Former ship's physician Gabriel Taverner, and Celia his sister as well as their compatriots in rural Devon, live in a time still reeling from Reformation atrocities. This story exemplifies some of the horrors of that period, although it must be said that the characters themselves are educated and mature.
Vestiges of religious intolerance as well as damaged lives are what this story is about.Gabe and his friend Coroner Theo Davy, attempt to solve a death which becomes one, and then a series of murders. The area "gentry" definitely are not who they seem to be as our characters find out.
There is a hopeful-of-better-times ending which I appreciated. I gave it 3.5 stars rounded to 4 as it was darker than I care for
#FalseAccusations #NetGalley
" There is nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide … Summer of 1991 Nothing unusual ever happens in the sleepy village of Willowgrove.,everyone is shocked to their core when a local woman – Mrs Trevor – is murdered. Her daughter, Rosie confesses ..but Rosie has learning difficulties,and Flora Morgan –trained to help those who can’t represent themselves – is called in to assist. Flora has known Rosie for years.. Rosie wouldn’t hurt a fly. "
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me this ARC by one of my favorite authors, Cora Harrison. It is a new series and perhaps the next one will be more of what I was expecting. I did like the last chapter which showed Flora and Ted, the local solicitor growing quite fond of each other.
Not so sure that the two chapters prior to the last one made great sense to me. Flora's mysterious catastrophic illness leading to a long hospitalization, which ended in a series of hallucinations ,in which the murder investigation was wrapped up. Hmmm. Did Flora solve it or just think she solved it?
It was a unique type of British crime novel, a "cozy" of sorts, and Cora Harrison is a very fine writer and seemed to pull it off pretty well. Try it! 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
Thanks to Chris Nickson, favorite author, NetGalley and Endeavor for this fascinating book about an era in Britain I knew little about. I was reminded that Churchill wrote the book "While England Slept" in 1938 and JFK wrote a rebuttal of it , "Why England Slept" in 1940.
It was clearly a conflicted time in England and especially Leeds with deep economic depression. I will mention that I was not yet born, and my father, who was in battle in the South Pacific at my birth, always stated that he would not go to war again unless the Japanese were landing in Atlantic City. (We were from New Jersey) Dad had performed a heroic act shortly before my birth aboard his ship, which haunted him his whole life.
That was in my mind as I got into this quite excellent book, and I am still exploring after reading it, what was going on in England at that time. I was unaware of the factions existing in the UK at that time, and my husband whose parents were still British Citizens in the 1930s was not either.
Enter "the political tensions between Mosley’s Blackshirts and working-class Communists in 1930's Leeds" which was a city "struggling to shake off the effects of the Great Depression," and our hero WWI Vet DI Urban Raven. The Battle of Holbeck Moor September 1936 followed a week of rising tension, Sir Oswald Mosley against city orders, marched his Blackshirts ( British Union of Fascists) to Holbeck. The expected BUF rally was aborted by about 30,000 Leeds residents, opposing communists among them.
One unpopular, and mostly unmourned man( a means test inspector),was murdered and left in an alley which began our story. Detective Inspector Urban Raven was given the unwelcome task of finding the murderer with many unanswered questions. Was the murder a vengeful act or was it due to the rising political tensions in Leeds ? Which "side" was responsible and why were subsequent murders happening?
Add to that Urban's unraveling marriage, helping his young assistant DC Daniel Noble cope with the ensuing violence, and the conflict of his superiors, and you have a perfect mystery novel.
Suffice to say, it ends well (for most) and I sincerely hope this will become a series by this gifted writer.
