As Stella Darnell arrives at Yew Tree House, it seems like an idyllic little place to spend the summer. Like any village, Bishopstone has it’s past and a dark side lurking beneath the surface. The holiday is a trial of sorts for her, partner Jack Harmon and his seven-year-old twins, Milly and Justin, not forgetting Stanley the dog. Stella‘s thoughts and feelings around a more permanent living arrangement with Jack is always changing, but what better way to trial the arrangement? As they disembark and start to explore it’s clear that the house is a little dilapidated once you look closer. Stanley and Millie, both as lively and full-on as each other, are soon tramping round the garden making discoveries. The house belongs to the Stride family, two sisters Stevie and Rosa live in the annex while eking out their state pension by renting the main house for holidays. Perpetually single, the two women can’t afford to run Yew Tree House, but can’t afford to leave either. It’s clear that some parts of the house are past their best, but cleaning company owner Stella, can see past that and once the place has had a good scrub it will be adequate for a family holiday. However, the house has a complex history, especially the period during WW2 when Stevie and Rosa were girls, living with mum Adelaide and an evacuee called Henry. Their Dad Rupert is called up but loses his life at Dunkirk, leaving his family to make their own way in the midst of rationing and the bombings while their house is also used as a meeting place for the Home Guard. When Millie is exploring one day she finds an old pill box in the garden (a concrete guard post or dug-out from where volunteers would defend the coastline) putting past and future on a collision course. Inside is a skeleton, with a hole in it’s skull that’s been caused by serious force. Jack and Stella may have fallen upon a murder mystery for their popular podcast, but as the aged vicar glares at them from his cemetery across the road, it could be that not everyone wants the truth to be discovered.
This is a book within a series based around Jack’s true crime podcast and I would recommend reading the others to better understand the relationships in this story. I felt I connected better with the wartime section of the story and I think it was because regular readers will know these characters well. Jack is rather blindly optimistic about their first family holiday, leaving readers and Stella as the more doubtful parties on this journey, especially when we meet the redoubtable Milly. Despite being of primary school age, Millie is possibly in charge of every room she walks in and if I were Stella, I’d be imagining what this exuberance might look like when ramped up by teenage hormones! A terrifying thought. I didn’t pick up the chemistry between Stella and Jack at first, but they clearly have a joint passion for solving mysteries and presenting true crime stories that’s rather infectious. I really liked the fact that both characters were connected to the area, bringing an added element to their sleuthing as I felt they had a stake in the village’s history and a real thirst for the truth. I thought the author created an interesting balance, not only between the two timelines, but with a contrasting lightness and shade of the plot. Family life is very lively and full of fun, especially with Stanley’s antics, and there was an almost Famous Five style coziness to the mystery. However, as foreshadowed by the glowering vicar in the book’s opening, there are darker undertones that become even more pronounced as we travel back to the 1940’s.
War isn’t the only cloud over Rosa and Stevie’s family, there is a missing girl too and the anxiety felt by Adelaide Stride about her two girls is very real. I felt Adelaide’s uneasiness around some of the guard, who move freely around the downstairs at night. The house is split between normal family life upstairs, with the realties and tension of war downstairs. There’s a sense this is men’s business and the presence of them in her family home must have added to her worries about her girls. Can Adelaide trust them? It seems clear she has her instincts and one character definitely raised her hackles (and mine). Tension and suspense build in both timelines, with some creepy moments but the wartime sections were the more disturbing. The present day sections have plenty of humour, the directness and attitude of Miliie, as well as plenty of twists to keep the reader on their toes. The fact that some of the characters from the 1940’s still live in the vicinity added to the tension towards the end of the book, as I wondered if any of them were still a danger in the present day. What might they do to keep certain secrets buried? Stella and Jack would need to keep their little family safe, all the while uncovering a tale that holds the heartbreak and tragedy of WW2, alongside a vengeful and murderous secret.
Meet the Author
Lesley Thomson was born in 1958 and grew up in London. She went to Holland Park Comprehensive and the Universities of Brighton and Sussex. Her novel A Kind of Vanishing won The People’s Book Prize in 2010. Lesley combines writing with teaching creative writing. She lives in Lewes with her partner.
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