The sleepy, damp, village of Pudding Corner, Norfolk, near the eastern English seaboard, is about to face a tragedy. This light English village mystery called THE POTTING SHED MURDER starts with Daphne Brewster, who works in marketing media, and her husband James, struggling to pay the bills in swanky London. The polite Daphne is even driven to road rage, or more correctly parking rage, and they face armed robbers. They need to move.

To me, the first instalment was the most entertaining, as life gets decidedly slower after the move. The multicultural couple and their three young kids settle in Cranberry Farmhouse and start to meet the villagers. James keeps working but Daphne spends time at the school gate and starts refurbishing furniture. Now she has left London she has time to get to know her neighbours and apply her artistic side to vintage furniture. Sometime later, after a shouted argument was overheard, a mature man called Mr. Papplewick is found dead in his garden allotment. He seems to have died of an unexpected heart attack. But his grieving widow spitefully tries to blame some local people who camp out and practise Wiccan beliefs. Just because they are odd, doesn’t prove anything. 

The deceased man is referred to as the headmaster of the small school. I’m sure the term principal is used now. Marianne Forbes, another transplanted Londoner, is more brash than Daphne but befriends her on the basis that they have London in common. Norfolk is well known in England as a place where people go to retire, so it’s interesting to see city dwellers now moving out for more affordable homes and amenities. Minerva, with her shy, earnest little boy Silvanus, is another outsider, but in this case, they are with the Wiccan group.

There are gossip, secrets and lies. I think every village in fiction has this in common. For no reason – except having time on her hands – Daphne starts trying to clear Minerva of wild accusations. When snooping in the potting shed Daphne finds an envelope marked Last Will and Testament, and the police arrive, and Daphne tells them it’s nothing important. Say what? She instantly lost all the sympathy she’d built with me.

Paula Sutton started well with THE POTTING SHED MURDER but then got wordy as she gave the background of everyone in sight. I think a second book in the Hill House Vintage Murder Mystery series might move faster as the setting is established.