MURDER IN THE MIST
by Amy Myers
A wrong turn brings Peter Marsh and his daughter Georgia into a cold case about to heat up.
Because retired DCI Peter Marsh is in a wheelchair, his daughter literally does the legwork in their quests to turn cold cases into fodder for their popular books. The neglected garden and cottage they find at the end of a lane in Kent draw them into the affairs of the Fernbourne Five (think Bloomsbury Group of the World War II era). The villagers of Fernbourne give them an icy reception, but the surviving members and descendants of the Five are more forthcoming about the plans of The Fernbourne Trust to open the manor house as an arts center. The Marshes’ attraction to the stream near Birdie Field’s cottage is vindicated when it turns out to be the site of supposed plagiarist Alwyn Field’s suicide over a thwarted affair with Elfie Lane, who was married to author Gavin Hunt. The death of another Five member during a London bombing is still open to suspicion. When a stranger who’d also been asking about the Five is gunned down, the Marshes start digging in the past for clues to solve the current murder and find what the village is working so hard to keep buried in the past.
Another of Myers’s complicated tales of past misdeeds (Murder and the Golden Goblet, 2007, etc.), full of historical tidbits, moments of terror and a surprise ending.