Faithful unto Death

Miss Lemon begs her readers' pardon for her long silence. No, she wasn't enjoying an extended holiday in Biarritz. She was moving house! A daunting task, one must agree, for those who collect British mysteries in the quantity that Miss Lemon does.

Whilst un-shelving, organising and re-shelving her treasured possessions, Miss Lemon came across Faithful unto Death (1996), the fifth entry in the Inspector Barnaby series, and she enjoyed every second of it.

In this installment, Barnaby and his smug bag-carrier, Sgt. Troy, are tasked first with the disappearance of Simone Hollingsworth, the docile-seeming wife of an aggressive technology entrepreneur, and then, later, Alan Hollingsworth's suspicious suicide. Thrown into the mix is the brutal hit-and-run that kills Deborah Brockley, an awkwardly plain 30-something spinster and neighbour of the Hollingsworths, who harbours surprising secrets of her own. 

Are these crimes connected? And who could be the author of such callous violence in a village as quaint and placid as Fawcett Green? The solution certainly surprised Miss Lemon.

Like all of Caroline Graham's novels, Faithful unto Death is witty and well-crafted and stuffed full of quirky characters shrewdly drawn. A perfect diversion from relocation stress.