Beneath These Stones - Hardcover

Ann Granger has lived in cities all over the world, since for many years she worked for the Foreign Office and received postings to British embassies as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. She is now permanently based in Oxfordshire.

Yet another homicide for Superintendent Alan Markbys 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 Sonias 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, Tammys teacher at St. Clares, tries to help but soon suspects that Tammy is hiding something. Markbys 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 Sonias 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 Sonias flings; so was woodworker Peter Burke, once involved with Jane. Simon Franklin, recently broken up and then reconciled with Bethan Talbot, was another of Sonias targets. Not until Merediths house has been thoroughly vandalizedand Derry Haywood viciously attacked, and Tammy has told alldoes 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. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.