Four amateur sleuths investigate a missing farmer. Did Joe run away due to his overbearing mother in law or is there something more sinister behind his disappearance…?
A Harvest Murder is the third book in the Ham Hill series by Frances Evesham. It is the first book that I have read of the series so it works as a standalone. There are some mentions of things that had occurred in the past and I think there is some relationship and character development in the first books that I would benefit from reading.
The four sleuths are two couples: Imogen and Dan, Adam and Steph. This adds an extra dynamic to the plot as they compare themselves and their relationship to the other couple. It also allows us to see a different, more personal aspect to their character.
Farmer Joe goes missing as does one of Dan’s donkeys. Both return but Joe is poisoned before he can explain his disappearance. This book fits firmly into the cosy murder mystery genre. However, the death takes second place to the tension between Imogen and Dan as their relationship crumbles.
Dan finds himself the target of a campaign of increasingly dangerous incidents and this is given equal prominence in the plot. There is little violence or detail about the death. The English village setting and the occasion of Apple Day provides the backdrop to the plot.
A Harvest Murder is an enjoyable murder mystery novel.
I have previously reviewed Murder at the Abbey which is from Frances Evesham’s Exham On Sea series.
A Harvest Murder
One unexplained disappearance is strange, but two are sinister.
In Lower Hembrow, an idyllic village nestled beneath Ham Hill in Somerset, the villagers are preparing to enjoy the autumn traditions of the rural English countryside until Joe Trevillion, a curmudgeonly local farmer and the father of six children, vanishes.
When Adam Hennessy, the ex-detective proprietor of The Plough, the village’s popular Inn, investigates, he finds ominous undercurrents beneath apparently harmless rumour and gossip.
Meanwhile, a vicious campaign of vindictiveness forces Adam and his three amateur sleuth friends to dig deep into the secret lives of their neighbours to expose the source of a cruel vendetta and prevent another death.
As they uncover the disturbing truth, the friends learn they must also lay their own past lives to rest before they can hope to make their dreams for the future come true.
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Author Bio –
Frances Evesham is the bestselling author of the hugely successful Exham-on-Sea murder mysteries set in her home county of Somerset, and the Ham-Hill cosy crime series set in South Somerset.
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