Julia Lanchester, has left her father's show in protest over his quick remarriage after her mother's death. She is now working for the Fotheringill estate as a tourist information manager.
Shortly after q quick visit from her father, her new stepmother calls her in a panic. Julia's father has disappeared. He left his phone with a text started to Julia...the rhyme of the magpie. With that call, Julia will be drawn into a murder investigation.
Julia's life spirals out of control as she works with the man who has been hired to replace her on the show. Her car is stolen and someone locks her into her makeshift garage. Her relationship with Michael is torn between attraction and the urge to hit him for taking her place.
While searching for her father, Julia and Michael discover the body of a dead man. Kenneth Kersey was the communications director for a power company which intended to build a wind farm.
Rupert Lanchester was opposed to the wind farm and there had been some strife between him and the power company. Michael and Julia now have two reasons to search for her father.
Julia starts off as a somewhat unlikable character. Her dismay over her father's second marriage has caused her to lock her heart away. She has isolated herself from others. The investigation will force her to face her problems and make her realize that she can't do this alone. Her growing attraction to Michael and her concern over her father gradually changes her attitude.
As she and Michael grew closer, you could see her attitude change. She became a much more sympathetic character.
Ms. Wingate has written a tense, complicated mystery which gradually draws the reader in. Her characters are three dimensional with all the flaws and strengths exposed.
With her personal life in disarray, Julia Lanchester feels
she has no option but to quit her job on her fatherβs hit
BBC Two nature show, A Bird in the Hand. Accepting a
tourist management position in Smeaton-under-Lyme, a
quaint village in the English countryside, Julia throws
herself into her new life, delighting sightseers (and a
local member of the gentry) with tales of ancient Romans
and pillaging Vikings.
But the past is front and center when her father, Rupert,
tracks her down in a moment of desperation. Julia refuses
to hear him out; his quick remarriage after her motherβs
death was one of the reasons Julia flew the coop. But
later she gets a distressed call from her new stepmum:
Rupert has gone missing. Julia decides to investigateβshe
owes him that much, at leastβand her fatherβs new
assistant, the infuriatingly dapper Michael Sedgwick,
offers to help. Little does the unlikely pair realize that
awaiting them is a tightly woven nest of lies and murder.
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