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THE CIPHER GARDEN
BY MARTIN EDWARDS
Review by Diana Bane
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THE CIPHER GARDEN is a mystery that gives up its secrets slowly,
and in the end hammers home the fact that people and places
may not be as lovely as they seem.
The book is set in England’s Lake District. Readers who
enjoy Midsomer Murders on cable television will feel right
at home, as instead of the various Midsomers, we have the Sawreys:
Old Sawrey, Near Sawrey, Far Sawrey, and a few other villages
as well, plus the occasional requisite lake. To be sure we
don’t forget where we are, there are from time to time
references to Beatrix Potter, whose cottage is preserved as
a tourist destination nearby. A large ensemble cast is slowly
introduced, of so many characters that at first it is hard
to keep them apart. Daniel Kind stands out as owner of Tarn
Cottage, which possesses the title cipher garden. Daniel, a
history don and tv personality, is new to the district, having
come there both for the idyllic rural lifestyle and in search
of reconciliation with his late father’s memory. Later
he is joined by both his wife and his sister.
Hannah Scarlett is a DCI who needs to earn her way back into
the good graces of her superiors by successfully heading up
a cold case team here in the back of beyond. Hannah’s
mentor, Ben Kind, now deceased, was father of the aforementioned
Daniel. All the relationships of everyone we meet are equally,
if not more, convoluted. We find ourselves in Miss Marple’s
English village updated to the 21st century. The immediate
cold case concerns Warren Howe, co-owner of a landscape gardening
business, who was slashed to death with his own scythe and
tossed in a trench he’d dug himself some ten years previous.
Anonymous notes to various people, including the police, have
set the whole business off again by accusing Tina Howe -- who
is now married to the other co-owner of the gardening business
-- of her husband‘s murder.
Hannah’s current detective partner, Nick, cautions her
that no good will come of digging up the past, even though
of course it is their job to solve these cold cases. Warren
Howe was was a major womanizer and in general not a nice man,
and nobody -- with the possible exception of his son and daughter
-- is very sorry he is dead. Though of course they would have
preferred him to have a quieter, more dignified manner of death.
As we are introduced to the rest of the characters, it begins
to seem as if the major preoccupation of them all was and still
is, not to put too fine a point on it, sex. They are a bit
like rabbits; no wonder Beatrix created Peter. Even the DCI
has trouble keeping her mind on her job, what with a yearning
for Daniel that she tries to attribute to a resemblance to
his father Ben. But Hannah already has a life partner, Marc,
and not only that, she is (secretly) pregnant. Daniel has Miranda,
but he is equally intrigued by Hannah -- and so it goes, with
all of them. The first hundred pages are given over to introducing
the many characters and establishing their convoluted relationships,
and really it was only the puzzle of the cipher in Daniels
garden that kept me reading.
But somewhere between pages 100 and 150, the tangled relationships
began to turn into motives, and the characters, all of them
suspects, had somehow developed depth, so that I began to care
about the outcome. Gradually, almost imperceptibly at first,
a creepy darkness sneaks into the story. It’s like the
cipher garden at Daniel’s cottage, which is full of beautiful
plants that are also poisonous, every one. Ominousness begins
to build, and two hundred pages in, a new horror happens --
as a direct result of reopening the cold case. That is the
end of the book's Part One.
Part Two is so different in tone it almost seems a different
book entirely, and the pace is faster too, like running downhill.
The denouement is swift and ugly, yet it seems inevitable,
and so it fits.
THE CIPHER GARDEN is a thoroughly disturbing yet satisfying
read.
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