BENEATH THESE STONES

Yet another homicide for Superintendent Alan Markby’s Bamford precinct (Call the Dead Again, 1999, etc.). Widower Hugh

Franklin, owner of none-too-prosperous Hazelwood Farm and father of 12-year-old Tammy, had taken another wife, fun-loving, man-chasing Sonia Lambert. As might be predicted, the marriage had never worked too well, but Hugh, his bookish brother Simon, and everyone who knew her are shocked when Sonia’s body, stabbed to death, is found on a nearby railway embankment by gypsy Danny Smith. As Markby and newly promoted Inspector Dave Pearce begin their investigation, Jane Brady, Tammy’s teacher at St. Clare’s, tries to help but soon suspects that Tammy is hiding something. Markby’s girlfriend Meredith Mitchell, a Foreign Service worker now based in London and owner of an ancient cottage in Bamford, also tries to help by checking out the suspects who had reason to cheer Sonia’s death. The line begins just down the road from Hazelwood Farm, at the modest B&B run by Derry and Belinda Haywood. Derry was one of Sonia’s flings; so was woodworker Peter Burke, once involved with Jane. Simon Franklin, recently broken up and then reconciled with Bethan Talbot, was another of Sonia’s targets. Not until Meredith’s house has been thoroughly vandalized—and Derry Haywood viciously attacked, and Tammy has told all—does the solution arrive. The customary assortment of intriguing locals adds interest and a bit of tension to a generally phlegmatic plot: a boon,

nevertheless, to lovers of the British village procedural.