First in the lovely Birds of a Feather Mystery series comes a crime story set in Suffolk, not far from London. I've already enjoyed a Potting Shed mystery by Seattle author Marty Wingate who well describes the English countryside. Why stop at gardening when you can birdwatch!
THE RHYME OF THE MAGPIE follows Julia Lanchester, a practical, detail-oriented nature lover who is determinedly making a new life for herself. Her father remarried soon after her mother's death, and while it's easy for outsiders to say life is short and he deserves to be happy, Julia sees it as a betrayal of the family. Her father hosts a BBC TV nature show and Julia has cut her ties with the BBC and come to manage a country estate towards a tourist income. Lord Fotheringill here is a bachelor, and Julia manages to thwart a co-worker's attempts to set her up with the peer - even if they both enjoy birdwatching.
Julia's father comes to see her, then is reported missing by his new wife, while Julia's car has been stolen. Together with her father's new assistant, Michael Sedgwick, she goes to look for him and instead discovers the body of a man in a gruesome incident. What is going on? Issues of the day include proposed wind farms that would spoil a rare bird habitat, and the deceased worked for the wind farm company. That's not worth killing for, is it? And Julia still doesn't know where her father Rupert has gone.
With plenty to puzzle us, and lovely countryside details, we can settle in to enjoy this story. Locally kept farm pigs not only produce quality pork, they provide bird habitat. A twitcher - fanatical spotter of rare birds - makes an appearance, while the one bird that Julia didn't want to see - a lone magpie, presaging sorrow - signposts death. A nicely balancing touch is that an Asian family run a general store, and one of the family offers to help guide visitors to the stately home where Julia works. In fact, the cast is plentiful and varied, with modernisation and tradition side by side in the villages.
Marty Wingate has written non-fiction books on gardening, which make her fiction books a delight to read. Whether you love the outdoors, or wildlife, or environmental issues, or cracking good mysteries, I highly recommend THE RHYME OF THE MAGPIE.
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.
No excerpt available.
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