From Publishers Weekly
Far from cozy, this chilling, unsentimental English village mystery features such urban ills as drugs and land exploitation, which here are seen to ruin rural lives. Meredith Mitchell, a career woman in the Foreign Office, is delighted to escape the daily grind in London when Chief Inspector Alan Markby invites her to house-sit for his sister in the village of Bamford. Although the pair (seen last in Say It with Poison ) are wont to quarrel, Meredith is soon helping Alan investigate the murder of a man buried alive at a development site, a former farm, where a concrete foundation is about to be poured. She points out that the corpse has gold teeth, unusual for a Briton. While the duo seeks the victim's identity, various suspects surface, including red-haired Alwyn Winthrop, who longs to escape nearby Greyladies farm, development architect Steven Wetherall and the contractor Dudley Newman. After the dead man is ID'd as a French undercover narc, Granger springs a further surprising and convincing ending. First-rate characterization and the atmospheric Cotswolds setting give this tale uncommon depth.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Another chapter in the lives of Chief Inspector Alan Markby, of Bamford in the Cotswolds, and Meredith Mitchell, who's employed by the Consular Service and presently harnessed to a dull job in the London office. Their edgy, uncommitted relationship (A Season for Murder, 1992) is revived when Meredith agrees to housesit for Alan's vacationing sister Laura. She arrives in Bamford soon after the discovery of an unknown murder victim, buried on what was Lonely Farm, where contractor Dudley Newman is building houses under the supervision of disagreeable foreman Jerry Hersey. Two other farms in the area are fair game for developers--Greyladies, the Winthrop place, where son Alwyn would happily sell, and the nonworking Witchett farm, whose aged owner, Dolly Carmody, will hang on till death. The victim is finally identified as a drug agent on the trail of a shipment. His mission in this quiet backwater remains a mystery until a BMW with foreign plates, another killing, and Meredith's eager sleuthing turn up the answers. A mildly intriguing puzzle shares the spotlight here with a leisurely exploration of the area's legends and changing mores. Above-average procedural in the classic British mode. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
