Today Kate Braithwaite reviews the second book in the River View series, By the Gate by Jeanette Taylor Ford. The author has very kindly offered a paperback as a giveaway to a winner in the UK or an ebook to a winner elsewhere in the world To be in with a chance of winning this wonderful prize, simply leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.
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When farmer Elwyn Price discovers a long-buried skeleton in the field he hires from Lucy Baxter, it sends DI Cooke and DS Grant on a seventy year old murder investigation. The two detectives follow leads in various parts of the country, gradually unravelling a dark mystery. But how will their discoveries affect Lucy Baxter’s family and other residents of the village of Sutton-on-Wye?
In By the Gate by Jeanette Taylor Ford, the idyllic English village of Sutton-on-Wye are shocked at the discovery of a skeleton in a local farmer’s field. When crime scene investigators confirm that it is the body of a young woman, strangled seventy years ago, a search for missing persons from the time period turns up a series of unsolved murders.
Thanks to some elderly people with remarkable memories, DI Cooke and DS Grant are gradually able to find the truth about a wartime serial killer and secrets that have been kept by two friends for seventy decades.
By the Gate is the second in the River View series of mystery novels based in and around Sutton-on-Wye. Characters from the first book, Aunt Bea’s Legacy, make a welcome return, and although By the Gate works perfectly well as a stand alone read, the appealing characters will have readers who missed the first book keen to pick it up and find out more about Lucy Baxter’s arrival in Sutton-on-Wye.
The characters and locations are great strengths here. The book certainly has a cosy mystery feel, particularly as the likeable detective duo Cooke and Grant travel around the country, interviewing witnesses and enjoying a great deal of tea, cake and hearty pub food. A hint of romance for Grant is a welcome addition to the story. Ford also does an impressive job of bringing older characters to life in her fiction. Sam Williams, for example, has just lost his wife of fifty years, but was also, long ago, the boyfriend of the girl whose body is found in the field. He’s a very strong and sympathetic character. Anyone looking for a murder mystery with a good plot and an escapist read in a gentle, bucolic English setting, would be well-served to pick up a copy of By the Gate.
About the Author: Jeanette Taylor Ford is a retired Teaching Assistant. She grew up in Cromer, Norfolk and moved to Hereford with her parents when she was seventeen. An undiagnosed Coeliac, Jeanette was a delicate child and missed a great deal of schooling, but she had a natural ability to write good stories, even at the tender age of nine or ten. When young her ambition was to be a journalist but life took her in another direction and her life’s work has been with children – firstly as a nursery assistant in a children’s home, and later in education. In between she raised her own six children and she now has seven grandchildren (soon to be eight!), a beautiful great-granddaughter and a mischievous great grandson.
Jeanette took up writing again in 2010; egged on by a Facebook friend. To date, she has published eight novels for adults, a fantasy for children and a little book of short stories and poems. Aunt Bea’s Legacy is the seventh book and the first of a series.
She lives with her husband Tony, a retired headmaster, and two cats, in Derbyshire with a Nottinghamshire postcode, England. (I never know whether to tell folks I live in Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire!)
About the Reviewer: Kate Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her first novel, Charlatan, was longlisted for the Mslexia New Novel Award and the Historical Novel Society Award. The Road to Newgate was released by Crooked Cat in 2018. Kate lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and three children.
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