Thursday 24 March 2016

Lexie Conyngham

A change from her historical whodunit series, this is a story of stories. Totally charming.




My review -

It's wartime and young Dr Marian Cowie is taking a break from arduous duties in London during the bombing. She is staying in her grandmother's old cottage in a Scottish village near Aberdeen. On her first night a German plane crashes and gouges a chunk from the Fairy Hill and in the disturbed earth she finds a skull. The remains seem to be around twenty years old and Marian starts to ask the locals if anyone knows of somebody who disappeared around that time. The result is a string of stories told to her by the locals.

It took me a while to appreciate that these were stories and not one-sided conversations. When I did, I began to pick up little pieces of the local lore just as Marian did. The Scottish voice comes over beautifully in the telling and it's impossible not to hear it in your head with the accent. Eventually, along with Marian, we discover whose body has been buried in the hill and also who was responsible for putting it there. I found this a charmingly told and witty selection of little tales which all, in their way, threw light on the overall story.



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