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feather_ghyll) wrote2012-04-12 09:05 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2012-04-12 09:05 am
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REVIEW: Murder at the Flood
Murder at the Flood: Mabel Esther Allan. Greyladies, 2009
After quite enjoying The House By the Marsh, I was intrigued to learn that MEA had published a novel for adults in the same setting and so purchased the Greyladies edition. It’s a murder mystery in which the discovery of a body in a hillside churchyard coincides with the great floods in a 1950s Norfolk village. All the survivors from Marshton, including the murderer, are holed up in an increasingly nasty atmosphere on Church Hill, shuttling between the refuge of the church and the Vicarage, waiting for assistance to come or for the waters to recede.
Vicar’s wife Emily Verney is in an invidious position. Her husband was one of the first to find the body and, like hers, nobody can prove much of his alibi. Suspicions and rumours float around them and the many people who were spotted out and about around the churchyard although the wind was rising and it was no night to be out until the flood broke the bank. The deceased was a blackmailing drunk, who ferreted out the village’s secrets, from Emily’s career as a successful author of literary detective novels to darker and more personal secrets. Not many people grieved for Thomas Long, for he brought misery in his wake.
In the midst of sheltering a whole village, feeding it and keeping the children occupied, two pillars of the community – Colonel Pashley and Mr Pike, with the latter finally getting to carry out his ambition of emulating the detectives he’s read about - carry out an investigation. Emily is employed to take down what is said because she knows shorthand, but as Mr Pike is setting people’s backs up and her husband is still a serious suspect, she decides to try investigating for herself. But too much knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the community is still isolated because of the storm...
You can tell why the set-up appealed to Allan. While I thought she was guilty of telling rather than showing, especially in the opening chapters, where how Emily feels about her husband and the state of their relationship, among other things, is baldly stated, it is a compelling read. I don’t read murder mysteries to puzzle out whodunit, chiefly – I had ruled out the killer in my own mind. I thought that the plotting was fine, and it gripped me, even though I thought she probably needed to fine-tune her style... I see that Greyladies have published another murder mystery by Allan. Do I want to read it? Yeeees, but not immediately.
After quite enjoying The House By the Marsh, I was intrigued to learn that MEA had published a novel for adults in the same setting and so purchased the Greyladies edition. It’s a murder mystery in which the discovery of a body in a hillside churchyard coincides with the great floods in a 1950s Norfolk village. All the survivors from Marshton, including the murderer, are holed up in an increasingly nasty atmosphere on Church Hill, shuttling between the refuge of the church and the Vicarage, waiting for assistance to come or for the waters to recede.
Vicar’s wife Emily Verney is in an invidious position. Her husband was one of the first to find the body and, like hers, nobody can prove much of his alibi. Suspicions and rumours float around them and the many people who were spotted out and about around the churchyard although the wind was rising and it was no night to be out until the flood broke the bank. The deceased was a blackmailing drunk, who ferreted out the village’s secrets, from Emily’s career as a successful author of literary detective novels to darker and more personal secrets. Not many people grieved for Thomas Long, for he brought misery in his wake.
In the midst of sheltering a whole village, feeding it and keeping the children occupied, two pillars of the community – Colonel Pashley and Mr Pike, with the latter finally getting to carry out his ambition of emulating the detectives he’s read about - carry out an investigation. Emily is employed to take down what is said because she knows shorthand, but as Mr Pike is setting people’s backs up and her husband is still a serious suspect, she decides to try investigating for herself. But too much knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the community is still isolated because of the storm...
You can tell why the set-up appealed to Allan. While I thought she was guilty of telling rather than showing, especially in the opening chapters, where how Emily feels about her husband and the state of their relationship, among other things, is baldly stated, it is a compelling read. I don’t read murder mysteries to puzzle out whodunit, chiefly – I had ruled out the killer in my own mind. I thought that the plotting was fine, and it gripped me, even though I thought she probably needed to fine-tune her style... I see that Greyladies have published another murder mystery by Allan. Do I want to read it? Yeeees, but not immediately.