Before leaving the police force to serve in the First World War, Sergeant Herbert Reardon investigated the drowning death of a girl in a remote West Country village. Home from the war and still haunted by the case's unsatisfactory conclusion, he returns to the village to explore it further. When a maid is found murdered, Reardon believes the deaths--though they took place five years apart--must be linked, and he begins asking questions. Did Marianne Wentworth jump to her death or did someone push her? Who was she meeting the night she died? And which family members know more than they are telling?
Eccles (Last Nocturne; The Shape of Sand) paints a finely detailed portrait of life in a small English village, showing the far-reaching effects of the Great War. The mystery unfolds slowly alongside such signs of cultural upheaval as the shifting of social class boundaries and the possibility of new careers for young women. As Reardon probes deeper into Marianne's drowning, he must also decide how to forge a new life for himself. The village inhabitants--most notably Marianne's sister, Nella, who served as a nurse in France--are grappling with the same issues.
Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, and those interested in the history of the Great War and its aftermath, will appreciate Eccles's skillful portrayal of life in the trenches and on the home front, as well as the novel's complex saga of family secrets, love and loss. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams