7 August 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-349-44293-8 (HB)
The discovery of a body sends DI Wesley Peterson to the picturesque village of Little Rockingham in South Devon. The body is identified as Barry Brown, a celebrity ghost writer. The cottage had been ransacked, and his laptop is missing. However, the sight of a Rolex watch clearly on view suggests to Wesley that the killing is not motivated by theft but may most probably lie in his work.
Wesley’s son Michael is now thirteen and has kept
quiet to his classmates about his decision to take part in an archaeological
dig over the summer vacation. It’s bad enough having a father who is a police
inspector, without uncle Dr Neil Watson, an unconventional Indiana Jones figure
as well. When he arrives at the dig, Neil gives a speech about the World War
Two plane, a Lysander that had crashed there in September 1943. The pilot had
escaped but later died. As Neil talks Michael studies his fellow diggers. As
well as the students there were members of the archaeology society, who were
mostly in their retirement years. Also, some well-built men who he guessed were
former soldiers. Standing a little way
from the rest was an elderly man wearing an old beige bucket hat. Micheal
looked away, he looked the kind of man his parents used to warn him against
when he was younger.
As with previous books interspersed with Wesley’s investigation there are several diary entries dating from May 1943 from the diary of Flight Officer John Carmody who flies in an unmarked black plane back and forth dropping and collecting secret agents in an isolated French field. In a later entry he records that only half of them seem to make a return journey and often wonders what happens to them. There are six diary entries from John Carmody, and I found them all very moving. Also, during that period there are entries from the diary of young Edith Tallow whose husband has turned out not to be the nice man she thought she had married.
When DCI Gerry Heffernan and Wesley attend the postmortem, they discover that it possibly wasn’t the head wound that killed Barry Brown, more likely poison but they won’t know for sure until the toxicology results come through.
As frequently happens at digs, people turn up interested to know what’s happening, one such is Ralph Gornay, complete with silk cravat and silver-topped walking cane. Neil remembers him from the village meeting expressing it disrespectful to dig up a crashed plane. And Michael is again aware that standing a little way off is the man in the bucket hat. Michael mentions it to Neil and a short walk in his direction takes them to a place where someone has been amateurly digging. For what? Neil is not happy. Even less so when human bones are discovered.
As Wesley looks deeper into the death of Barry Brown it becomes clear from the many empty files at Barry’s house that someone didn't want the book he was writing to be written. The book he was writing was linked to the crashed plane, and the possibility that the pilot wasn’t the only one on the plane when it crashed.
As Wesley continues to investigate, he discovers a sinister history surrounding the moor and the village of Moor Barton. Who was the passenger and what happened to them?
On the personal front, one of the girls with the group of students at the dig introduces herself to Michael . ‘I’m Harriet’. Come and join us she says. And DS Rachel Tracey, with her police career, a farm to help run and a baby who is close to celebrating his first birthday, is not getting out and about as much as she used to. Gerry aware of her circumstances is trying to make it easy for her and consequently instead of being out interviewing people with Wesley she is in the office most of the time. Not what Rachel wants. And let’s not forget, Della, Pam’s mother., she of the weird crazes and arty clothes that prove so embarrassing to her teenage grandson, and Wesley.
This intriguing, ingeniously plotted mystery gripped me from start to finish. A real page turner. Most highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett
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