Customer Reviews

The Cipher Garden

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Martin Edwards is a modern day mystery writer who is not averse to using classing detective story elements in his work. He has a good plot, a professional and amateur detective investigating, a very clever red-herring right at the beginning, and a few other surprises of the Golden Age genre along the way.
A master gardener was murdered several years previously without the murderer ever caught. Then an anonymous letter to the police accuses the victim's wife of the murder. And other anonymous letters also appear. The way it all coalesces and develops is the story told by a modern master who never forgets he is a contemporay writer nor the legacy of classic detective fiction.

After "The Coffin Trail", the first of Edwards Lake District mysteries, I found myself interested in the further adventures of the principals and curious to know where the author was going with them. I was not disappointed with this one and in fact thought it better done than the first in so far as the depth of character development. I would not call this a police procedural like the excellent Deborah Crombie series since the primary character is not a police person, but a historian with a lot of curiosity plus an attraction to the local detective inspector. Bottom line for me is they are entertaining and should definitely be read in order

Though Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett knows her current assignment is an exile for screwing up the Rao trial and she would rather not be head of the Cold Case Review team, she is proud of the good stats supporting their efforts. A tip-off comes in that claims Tina Howe killed her spouse a "plantsman" Warren using his scythe as a grim reaper in the garden of customer Roz Gleave. Hannah notices the reaction of her Detective Sergeant Nick Lowther of relief. Though they have little new to go on, Hannah decides to reopen the investigation, which she notices upsets Nick, who was part of the original investigation.

At the same time, the police begin making new inquiries, historian Daniel Kind decides to look into the strange garden by his cottage. He hires landscaper Peter Flint, Warren's partner, to obtain insight. As the police homicidal case and the historian's curiosity connect, Hannah and Daniel seek the truth even as a fresh murder occurs to keep everything concealed.

The Howe cold case investigation is one of the best police procedurals of this always exciting series as a still in exile DCI Scarlett wonders why DS Lowther fails to use his poker face to hide his feelings with every newly discovered clue. While probing for clues, Hannah wonders who Nick is protecting and whether he and others suppressed evidence when they first investigated the case. Fans will appreciate this particular who-done-it because of the moral dilemma that the heroine expects to eventually face at the end of the inquiries.

Harriet Klausner

The second of the Lake District mysteries builds on the story-line in his first book, "The Coffin Trail". I felt the writing and characterisation was better in this book, and will happily work my may through the series. I could see this book being adapted for an episode of the British TV drama "Midsomer Murders". Recommended reading for those who enjoy "old-fashioned" British mysteries in a modern setting.

While I had enjoyed Martin Edwards' first Hannah Scarlett/Daniel Kind mystery novel, "The Coffin Trail," I had also thought that the book needed serious editing as "The Coffin Trail" focused more on the private lives of Daniel and Hannah rather than on the mystery at hand; also how Daniel was able to intinctively arrive at the right conclusion and so solve the mystery at the very end of the book, was a bit of a letdown. Of course, in the author's defence, he was trying to establish the premise for the series -- why Daniel and his significant other, Miranda, had moved to the Lake District, and why the up-and-coming DCI Hannah Scarlett has been taken off serious crimes and been given cold cases to resolve. So how did the second installment in this series compare to the first? The good news is that it is a much tighter mystery novel, focusing squarely on the suspects of the murder, rather than on the private lives of Daniel and Hannah; but the bad news is that, once again, Daniel solves the case using intuition; and for mystery fans who enjoy trying to figure out who the murderer is along with the ficitonal detectives, this can be very, very trying.

Almost a decade ago, local lothario, Warren Howe, was murdered with his own scythe while working on a client's garden. And although there was no dearth of suspects (including his own long suffering wife, Tina), no arrests were ever made. Now, however, the police have received an anonymous letter naming Tina as Warren's murderer, and thus giving DCI Hannah Scarlett and her cold case squad yet another murder investigation to sink their teeth into. Except that this time, the case comes with a complication -- DCI Scarlett's right hand man, Nick Lowther, was part of the original investigation and is friends with at least two of people involved in this case. And as Hannah and her team begin their investigations, it becomes obvious that everyone connected with this case seems to have secrets to protect. But have these secrets anything to do with the murder of Warren Howe? In the meantime, historian Daniel Kind is enjoying himself putting his cottage and garden to rights. But something about the garden strikes him as rather strange...

While I thought that Martin Edwards hadn't spent enough time developing the mystery subplot in "The Coffin Trail," the true definitely cannot be said of "The Cipher Garden." Here, the entire subplot dealing with Hannah and her team's investigation of Warren Howe as well as the "fleshing out" of characters most involved with the murder and the subplot dealing with Warren's daughter are very well developed and executed. So that it really was a shame that the author chose not to allow for the cold case team to solve the mystery at hand but for Daniel to make the intuitive leap and so figure what happened and why. Also, while I did find the subplot dealing with Daniel's search for more information about the creation of his strange garden interesting, I'm still not too sure how this really fitted in with Hannah's investigation, except perhaps to give Daniel an excuse to poke around. All in all, "The Cipher Garden" was an interesting and absorbing 3 star read, which bodes well for future installments in this series.