by Ellis Peters

In the idyllic English village of Comerford, policeman George Felse has to figure out who killed the former Nazi immigrant. A hard worker, he seemed to have a strong need to be both be alone, and to seek out those whom he could quietly terrorize. But George’s son Dom, does not believe that the prime suspect (war hero and his teacher) Chad Wedderburn is guilty. They set out separately to figure out who in their village is the murderer….

This is a slow moving mystery. We spend time learning about the villagers, the various veterans and their stories, and Dom’s school troubles. I bought a kindle set of the Felse mysteries for 99 cents – based on my liking of the equally slow moving Cadfael mysteries. The difference is that I saw the Derek Jacobi series before starting. So I has interest in learning more about the good monks of Shrewsbury. Here, I never learn enough about George to be invested in him. Dom is your standard smart kid who solves mysteries. Chad is an interesting character – war hero who wants war to go away. He simply wants to teach and not talk about his extensive experiences.

And all of the slow moving character building pays offish in the end. But I still feel like 40-50 pages could be simplified – a lot of repetitive character studies or descriptions of the place.

336 Pages

3.5/5