Product Description

Meredith Mitchell has joined her friend, archaeologist Ursula Gretton, in the Cotswold village farmland, digging for the old bones of Saxon warriors. But it's the discovery of some very new bones that brings Inspector Alan Markby to the ancient burial grounds to solve a modern-day murder.

The victim turns out to be the wife of Ursula's fellow archaeologist, Dan Woollard...with whom Ursula has just ended a brief affair. Dan claims he was trapped in an unhappy marriage, and in love with Ursula, but swears he's not guilty of murder. But when a second body is found on the site and attempts are made on Ursula's life, it takes the sleuthing skills of the Meredith and Markby team to sift through a mountain of conflicting clues, suspects, and possible witnesses to identify the killer and solve a twenty-five-year-old mystery as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #777038 in Books
• Published on: 1995-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A tidy, inventive and intricate plot graced with lovely scenic descriptions highlights Granger's ( Murder Among Us ) fifth village mystery set in the Cotswolds, this one tracing themes of longing and fear of loss. Chief Inspector Alan Markby still yearns for Meredith Mitchell of the Foreign Office (she loves him too but wants to live alone). Heartbreak also shadows the the lives of Brian Felston and his Uncle Lionel, crusty bachelors whose farm is the site of an ancient battlefield where archeologists are seeking the grave of Wulfric the Saxon. Several of the diggers also suffer from star-crossed love, as do some of the scruffy hippies who infuriate everyone by setting up a messy camp on the farm. Meredith gets involved when her old friend Ursula, working on the dig, suddenly becomes terrified that her former lover may have murdered his missing wife, and Markby steps in when corpses of decidedly recent vintage start to surface. A master of characterization, Granger specializes in engaging eccentrics, and she has a winner here--an irresistible old codger who lives at the local dump.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Ursula Gretton has two problems: She can't seem to convince her archaeology partner, Dan Woollard, that their affair is over, and she can't seem to locate Dan's wife, Natalie, who has disappeared. While Ursula never succeeds in persuading Dan that she's finished with him, Natalie does turn up--dead, not far from the site where Dan, Ursula, and their team are digging for the remains of Wulfric the Saxon. Enter Ursula's friend, Meridith Mitchell, Foreign Service consul and occasional love interest of Chief Inspector Alan Markby, in whose Cotswold jurisdiction the body is found. With great enthusiasm, Meridith involves herself in the investigation, and with somewhat less enthusiasm she involves herself once more with Alan. When another body turns up at the excavation, the hunt for the killer becomes more urgent than the archaeologists' hunt for Wulfric. Alan interrogates a number of likely suspects, including the sour, hyperreligious landowner Lionel Felston, Lionel's reticent nephew, Brian, and a band of New Age travelers who have been camping near the site. In the interstices of the investigation, Meridith and Alan pursue their uninspiring romance (``Their eyes met across the gnawed pizza crusts''). This latest in a series (Murder Among Us, 1993, etc.) has some nice twists, but alas, it moves with the speed of an archaeological excavation: painfully slow. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Like her heroine, Ann Granger has worked in the diplomatic service in various parts of the world. She met her husband, who was also working in the British Embassy, in Prague and together they received postings to places as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. They are now permanently based in Bicester, near Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Wow!!
Why have I never heard of this author before; she's as good as P.D. James or Deborah Crombie in this genre! Just lucked onto this at the library and loved it; good characters and interesting plot. Have two more of hers on hold. If you enjoy James or Crombie you will like this.

spellbinding & delightful all at once
This is a well woven story of a murder and the tangled web the main characters Meredith Mitchell and Chief Inspector Alan Markby must untangle to find the killer ... or killers.

The story opens with a young Ursula Gretin, an archeologist on a dig with a former married lover, Dan Woollard. Ursula broke off the affair with Dan who refuses to give up on her. He's married to a romance novelist Natalie Woollard. During the opening of the story, Dan calls Ursula to come to his home to see him on an urgent matter. Urgent to him that is. Once there, Ursula realizes that his main motive is to try to rekindle their relationship. She flatly refuses, insisting that their relationship is over. While there Dan tells her that his wife has gone off to visit her mother ... yet, Ursula spots her pocketbook, complete with wallet and car keys and begins to suspect the worst. What woman in their right mind would leave home without her purse, wallet or keys. Ursula suspects the obvious, that Dan has done away with his wife so he can spend his life with her .... or did he? Ursula confides to her friend Meredith her suspicions that Dan has done something to his wife, who then confides to her friend and police detective Alan. Together the two sleuths unravel a few mysteries -- not only the present one of Natalie Woollard's disappearance, but also a murder that is some 25 years old.

This is a well written, well told, spellbinding tail of love, betrayal, murder, guilt and innocence. Find this book and find out the conclusions. You'll hang on each and ever page until you come to the amazing conclusion. This is a great read!

Very nicely done!
If you like British police procedurals, then I highly recommend the Mitchell and Markby series. This is the fifth book in the series, and it has all the things in it that I have come to expect from this author. Ms. Granger is a master craftsman of character design. Her characters are wonderfully real, with just enough eccentricities to make them enjoyable. The plot is also wonderfully intricate and complex. The book explores all sorts of issues such as family values, unhappy marriages, disfunctional families and it does so effortlessly and seamlessly. This book is centered around an archeological dig where modern bodies and ancient bones seem to keep turning up. It's a great puzzle.