RogerBW's Blog

1993 mystery, nineteenth and last in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. Susan Gardiner unexpectedly inherits a run-down country pub and, since she's trained in restaurant management, decides to refurbish it and open it as a restaurant. Then one of her customers dies from mushroom poisoning…

Which, nearly a third of the way through the book, is when Henry Tibbett shows up; the whole thing is told from Susan's first-person perspective, unlike the other books which have mostly followed Tibbett or his wife Emmy.

It's pretty clear to the reader roughly who must be responsible, but why things are happening is more of a puzzle. Who's been starting rumours about the old place being haunted? Was the victim really accidentally drowned? And how is all this connected to killing in the present day? Various people are variously helpful or hindering, but it's not at all clear where anyone's loyalties lie. (Nor, for me, why a particular thing was hidden in a particular place, but this is a relatively minor flaw.)

Moyes is definitely back on form here after the slight disappointment of Black Girl, White Girl. Tibbett may not be in London, but he is at least in England, and Inspector Reynolds gets involved too. There are occasional mentions of events and people from previous books, but this doesn't feel like a swan song. On the other hand, it certainly is a worthwhile—if accidental—conclusion to the series. I'm very glad to see that Moyes returned to form, rather than just writing her last books re-treading old paths that have lost all their joie de vivre and wonder, as many declining writers do.

So not perhaps quite in the first rank of the Queens of Crime, not to mention a little too late, but my goodness I've enjoyed this trip through the three-decade career of a writer I'd never previously heard of. Definitely a forgotten treasure of the English murder mystery!