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travelsalongmybookshelf 's review for:
The Mystery of Yew Tree House
by Lesley Thomson
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
‘Stella, you and I are the perfect team. We are wasted lolling about by the sea.’
I haven’t read any others in this series, but I feel that you can read this as a standalone. You do get a bit of an intro and backstory at the beginning.
Eighty years of secrets. A body that reveals them all.
1940. At Yew Tree House, recently widowed Adelaide Stride is raising her two daughters alone - but it's not just the threat of German invasion that keeps her up at night. She is surrounded by enemies posing as allies and, while war rages, she grows sure that something terrible is about to happen.
2023. Soon after Stella Darnell begins her holiday at Yew Tree House, a skeleton is found in a pillbox at the bottom of the garden. The bullet hole in the skull tells her that the person was murdered.
This triggers the unravelling of a mystery eighty years in the making. Soon, Stella will learn that Adelaide was right to worry - the fighting might have been happening abroad, but the true enemy was always much closer to home...
1940. At Yew Tree House, recently widowed Adelaide Stride is raising her two daughters alone - but it's not just the threat of German invasion that keeps her up at night. She is surrounded by enemies posing as allies and, while war rages, she grows sure that something terrible is about to happen.
2023. Soon after Stella Darnell begins her holiday at Yew Tree House, a skeleton is found in a pillbox at the bottom of the garden. The bullet hole in the skull tells her that the person was murdered.
This triggers the unravelling of a mystery eighty years in the making. Soon, Stella will learn that Adelaide was right to worry - the fighting might have been happening abroad, but the true enemy was always much closer to home...
I got hooked on this one so quickly, it was right up my alley! A little bit Christie crossed with his fic like The Whalebone Theatre. I actually like the kids, with their famous five-esque want to find a murder- rah! (They are seven), the rector Snace is super creepy and I love a book where there are two timelines so that slowly slowly the mystery is unravelled.
Stella is a ex detectives son, she has a professional cleaning business and solves murders on the side with her partner Jack, who has a true crime obsession and whose own mother was murdered when he was 3. Stella does not particularly want to solve murders it seems, she just seems to fall into it.
‘Adelaide caught him gazing at her in his strange contemplative fashion, she reminded herself it wasn’t only the Nazis she should fear.’
Jack and Stella are fabulously bickery, there are a classic pair of old ladies, a very creepy and anciently decrepit vicar, two brilliant kids and a crazy but fabulous journalist in a van! This would be TV gold!
It’s complex with a twisting plot, murder in the past and present, leading us finally to the truth, it’s very well done. I was totally addicted and read this over 2 days, obsessed as I was to get to the end. I definitely want to read more of this series now I have discovered it!
Original, fantastic plotting, basically a total treat!