Below the Tree Line

June 15, 2018
The chronicler of the English village of Mellingham and the Anita Ray mysteries (For the Love of Parvati, 2014, etc.) kicks off a new series set in the bucolic Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.Felicity O'Brien's family has farmed the same plot of land for 300 years with little incident, but now something is clearly up. Felicity feels obliged to fire a shot into the darkness when she hears signs of an intruder for the third night running. Local realtor Marilyn Kvorak tells her that Franklin M. Gentile, whoever he is, wants to buy her spread for a seven-figure sum, a figure that's put stars in the eyes of Jeremy Colson, her life partner of 15 years. Her neighbor Clarissa Jenkins dies when her car plows into a tree on Felicity's property under the eyes of young bicyclist Nathan Holyoake. Soon afterward, Felicity finds the body of Clarissa's cousin Sasha Glover sitting dead beneath another tree. What's suddenly made Felicity's parcel, and perhaps those of her neighbors, so valuable that it's worth fighting and killing for? Maybe the clues lie in the gambling debts that Lance Gauthier, Felicity's logger, has piled up. Maybe the secret is locked in the head of her father, Walter O'Brien. But Lance isn't talking, and Walter's health problems have left him apt to ramble on--and to ramble off, as he does one day when he vanishes from the grounds of the Pasquanata Community Home. As she makes the rounds of her little town asking decorous questions, Felicity can only hope that the culprit is Kyle Morgan, Sasha's unsuitable boyfriend, because if it isn't, chances are that it's someone much closer to her heart.As usual, Oleksiw spins a placid, slow-burning mystery that won't disturb your dreams. The real star here is Pioneer Valley, a place that conveys an identity deeper and more memorable than that of any of its denizens.

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