HEMLOCK BAY

Heiress/collector/amateur sleuth Rachel Savernake’s fifth retro whodunit begins with two predictions of murder and ends with a denouement that goes on forever for the best of all possible reasons.

Though he knows nothing about his target but the man’s name, chartered accountant Basil Palmer has made a New Year’s resolution for 1931, and it’s to track down Louis Carson, whom he blames for the death of his beloved wife, and kill him. No sooner has the detective Basil hires, Joseph McAtee, traced Carson to Lancashire’s isolated Hemlock Bay, where pioneering developer Sir Harold Jackson has established an exclusive resort, than crime reporter Jacob Flint hears from fortuneteller The Great Hallemby, né Gareth Bellamy, that a murder’s been plotted in Hemlock Bay. Of course, the police don’t believe The Great Hallemby; nobody does except golden age fans, whose main question will be whether these two murders are one and the same. Spoiler: They’re not—and that multiplication of threats is only the first of the inventive leads Edwards sprinkles over Hemlock Bay, whose attractions range from Mermaid’s Grave, where a beguiled sailor’s widow allegedly killed the mermaid who enticed him, to the Hemlock Sun and Air Garden, a defiantly nudist beach. Attracted to the mystery by her recent purchase of the painting “Hemlock Bay” by rising artist Virginia Penrhos, Rachel runs rings around the limited abilities Inspector Young brings to the case. And after the final curtain has apparently fallen, she produces a series of further surprises that even Scotland Yard’s Inspector Philip Oakes has never suspected, making this her most dazzling performance to date.

The appended Cluefinder will remind fans of all the telling clues they duly noted but never considered clues.