The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 January 2022
by Minette Walters
How can you figure out who done it, when you don't yet know who it got done to? The opening chapters of this interestingly-constructed mystery novel overflow with explicit descriptive detail of a rotting corpse found in the abandoned ice storage lodge on the aging estate held by one woman and her two very close friends. What is painfully clear to both the reader and the two key inspectors investigating the case, is that the body is brutalized and decayed beyond recognition. Half the story is finding the culprit, the other half is merely figuring out who the sorry victim was.
Streach Grange is a large old country estate currently held by the last surviving member of its family and her two closest friends. Phoebe Maybury was investigated a decade before in the disapperance and presumed murder of her husband, who had been abusing her and spending all her money. That case was neveresolved. Could the anonymous rotting corpse be the missing husband? Everyone thinks so. As a result, Phoebe and her friends Anne and Diana are not well regarded in the streets of the nearby village. They're assumed to be murderers after all. It doesn't help that one of the inspectors thinks so, too, and of course, the appearance of dead bodies around the place. Most of this story takes place on the grounds of the estate, as the police diligently pursue innuendo, suggestion, hints, lies, larceny and even evidence to find the killer, if there even was a killer. After we get away from the details of rotting flesh and figure out how long the remains were stored in the titular Ice House, we sink into the familiar tropes of an English murder mystery and police procedural. The author, Minette Walters, for whom this was her first published mystery, is clearly familiar enough with the genre to push at its limits and twist it a little bit at the ends. The story is engaging and dark, filled with the bleak neglect of details common in characters found in this situation. There are hints because there are secrets. But what turns up in the Streech Grange Ice House might end up being an off-beat surprise. Or it might turn out it is just who we all assumed it was all along.
Walters was known for devising mysteries that didn't follow any overarching theme. She did not write her books as long series, as we typically expect these days. That's lucrative, after all. The book has surprises in its structure, in the undulating lives of its characters, and in the underlying corruption that surfaces like an unburied body. One or two of the characters walk away from center stage, one or two others have surprising and occasionally not really authentic shifts in character. Love appears in unlikely places. The characters suffer from that cinematic ill of lack of chemistry with each other, and this could leave the reader a little flat. Overall, though, the book has enough surprise to keep the pages turning, and to consider looking ahead to another of Walters's books.