Mitchell & Markby 12

Nearly a 4-star tale of love gone wrong, English country life, and mild family dysfunction. The actual mystery was not difficult to see where the story was going, but reader engagement was bolstered by the strong characterizations. One serious flaw in this series is prolonging the stalled-out relationship between Meredith and Alan (Markby). Realistically, romantic liaisons have a natural time arc: they either proceed to a settled cohabitation or they dissolve and each person goes their own way. Readers may find that some boredom sets in when a series gets to 12 books and the paired characters are still dancing around in an unresolved fashion. Ultimately, the primary thrust of the story kept me engaged but the Meredith-Alan aspect is stale and needs freshening up. ( )

I usually love Ann Granger's Mitchell and Markby series. This book is the 12 in the series. I usually like the combination of English village cozy and police procedural that these books usually offer. The mysteries are always a little tricky and I like the exchanges between Meredith Mitchell and Alan Markby. Alan is a police inspector in a small country district and Meredith is his girlfriend. She is a civil servant in the foreign office. But this book was missing a lot of these things. The mystery was fairly simple, and both Alan and Meredith seem to be rather ineffectual in their parallel investigations. I didn't even get much village flavour in this book except for the laconic builder George Biddock and the local gypsy family who are camped on the victim's land. There were a lot of loose ends and loose threads in the plot too. Disappointing. ( )