Burying the Past

December 10, 2012
In Cutler’s engaging fourth mystery featuring Det. Chief Supt. Fran Harman of the Kent CID (after 2008’s Still Waters), Fran’s upcoming wedding to Asst. Chief Constable Mark Turner is nerve-racking enough without the discovery of skeletal remains buried in the garden of her future home, a former rectory undergoing renovation. The victim, identified as repeat offender Frank Grange, may have been put there by the rectory’s mysterious previous owner, Marion Lovage, the headmistress of a junior school. Meanwhile, Mark’s two grown children—son David, a financial adviser, and daughter Sammie, now squatting at Mark’s house in the village of Loose—take a sudden interest in their father’s love life, if only to try to preserve their inheritance. Making a welcome appearance is antique dealer Lina Townend, the lead of one of Cutler’s other series (Guilt Trip, etc.), who lends her expertise in a search for clues in a cabinet found among Lovage’s stored items.

December 1, 2012
Kentish detectives' upcoming nuptials are disrupted by murder, rape and antiques. Caffy, one-half of Pact (Paula and Caffy's team) Restoration, has left her life of drug use and petty crime behind and now is an ace builder. So detail-oriented is she that she's the only one to spot an irregular patch in the garden of the rectory that's the future home of Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman and Assistant Chief Constable Mark Turner (Still Waters, 2008, etc.). When the hard ground yields up its obligatory skeleton, the building is cordoned off as a crime scene. With their love nest sealed up under the watchful eye of DI Kim Thomas, Mark and Fran look to move back to Mark's house in Loose, only to be rebuffed by his daughter Sammie, who's left her husband, moved in with her two kids and changed all of the locks. Sammie enlists the trans-Atlantic support of brother Dave, who flies in from the U.S. to persuade his dad not to remarry. In the meantime, the Rev. Janie Falkirk, Mark and Fran's officiant, develops cancer. Before her mastectomy, she asks Fran to look into the claim of young parishioner Cynd that she was raped and dispatched her assailant with a knife. Once Cynd, also a drug user and hooker, does a runner, Fran has no perpetrator and no victim for either crime. The rectory murder also hits a wall, since former owner Marion Lovage seems to have left no papers, no mementos and no past at all, except for some marvelous old furniture. So, Fran calls on furniture restorer Lina Townend to unlock the mysterious Ms. Lovage's writing cabinet in hope of unlocking the decades-old mystery. Cozier than most British procedurals, Cutler's fourth Harman entry will please readers who prefer their malice domestic.

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January 1, 2013
Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman of the Kent CID has a very full plate. The budget has been slashed, and a body has turned up in the garden of the old rectory that she and her fianc', Assistant Chief Constable Mark Turner, are renovating. Wedding plans and a major building project are more than enough, but Fran also has to deal with the suicide of a fellow officer; an epidemic of metal theft, which affects her renovations; and a woman who confesses to stabbing a man who raped her. As she investigates the body in her garden, Fran notes that the previous owner of the rectory was extremely careful to cover her tracks. Then there are Mark's grown children, who are not happy about the impending nuptials. In fact, one of them is behaving very strangely. Cutler effectively combines procedural detail with interpersonal drama. A good choice for British-procedual fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)