The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 21 February 2010
by Caroline Graham
The mystery novels that work best are those that appeal to our sense of humanity and place, are just complicated enough to not be obvious, and leave enough clues that the reader may solve the case at about the same time as the intrepid investigator. Those that excel are sometimes considered "genre-bending", but that usually means that a better than average quality of literature manages to seep into the formula. This novel is one such. It is a straightforward murder mystery investigated by Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and his trusty if testy sidekick, Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy. (These names may be familiar to readers who are also viewers of the British television series, Midsomer Murders, which is based on Caroline Graham's seven mystery novels, but which has also gone far beyond them over more than a decade on the air.) On the grounds of a New Age commune in the village of Compton Dando, a murder takes place during one of their past-life regression ceremonies. The various characters who inhabit the commune, which resides in a big old Victorian stone mansion, start out by interpreting the death using arcane and imaginative, pseudo-religious, mystical and astral explanations. They are bereft, but as the investigation continues, the characters slowly come back to earth, realizing that one amongst them is a killer. There is the daughter of a wealthy and loathesome man. The man himself is there visiting his daughter with the hopes of regaining her affection. There is a pair of mystics who claim to channel spirits from other planets. The master of the commune has a magnetic personality. And one mentally disturbed youth seems capable of anything. While the TV show stays focused on the investigators, in the book they don't appear until a hundred pages in. Graham stays concentrated on her various characters, and herein lies the strength of her writing. The characters are strongly realized, with convincing life histories and given complex story lines. Why is each of them in the commune? What do they get out of it, and what are their hopes? In the end, each of them has also revealed some weakness. The writing is sharp and witty without being unecessarily farcical. Graham doesn't dwell on the rural English village setting so much as the inner lives of the people who live there. Some passages that develop these people elevate much, but not all, of the book above the typical murder mystery. She keeps the action moving, though, with a satisfying and sharp conclusion. Recommended.