Tag Archives: Haynes Bedfordshire

This novel is set a few years into the future, 2019, and the author invents a little to suggest this. For example, instead of the internet we now have Futurenet, and milking parlours in diaries are even more automated than they are now. But this is not a work of science fiction and doesn’t pretend to be. In some ways it more resembles a historical novel, because it deals not only with a murder in 2019, but also one which took place in 1919. Hence the title, Murder Now and Then.I get the impression that the author is well versed in historical research, some of which is described in the book in connection with the earlier murder. She is certainly interested in a sense of place, which comes out well when she deals with the locations the action takes place in, Bedfordshire and Jersey.The ‘now’ murder is that of a farmer, and for want of another suspect the lead detective is sure the farmer’s wife did it. The fact that she has no real motive does not concern him unduly, and he is overly is keen to crack the case before he retires. Fortunately, his junior officers are not convinced. Two of these, DS Tony Brown and DC Cathy Peterson, persevere in their efforts to figure it all out. In the course of these efforts they get somewhat close and personal in a hotel bedroom though not, dear tax-payer, in police time. And so the book offers some romantic interest as well.Without giving away details of the plot, it turns out that the two murders a century apart are in fact connected, but it seems unlikely to me that the reader will figure out how without the help of the author since the connection is really quite ingenious. This reader certainly failed to crack it, though one aspect at least of what is going on is clearly signaled.This is not a breathless book. The author takes her time and lets us get to know her characters. The various strands of the plot, and there are several, are tied up one by one towards the end. An involving read and one which I greatly enjoyed.