Eric Reed (1)

This book was sent to me by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you.

In the sequel to The Guardian Stones, Grace Baxter is in Newcastle at the end of 1941 where she is now an auxiliary police officer. It is a particular position created to fill vacancies left by men who are now in the armed services. She can interview people, but she has no authority to arrest them.

Grace is assigned to a police substation in a Newcastle neighborhood, rather than a large station. The staff is diminished, but she is not welcomed with open arms and when a murdered woman is found in the ruins of a small Roman temple, her body laid out in a reverse swastika, Grace is expected to go house to house interviewing the locals while the men do the gritty police work. The problem is that the locals do not trust an outsider and the regular police are quick to decide that the dead woman tripped and her limbs just happened to fall into the swastika position. Grace does not buy this but there is little she can do until a second murder, this time a man found in the same position, occurs.

I found the murders the least interesting part of the story. What was the most interesting to me was the description of how the citizens of an average working class neighborhood coped with the stresses of war, the bombings, and the lost lives both military and civilian.

The sergeant in charge of the station is on the verge of a mental breakdown because his entire family was wiped out in a bombing raid while he was not at home. An eccentric academic is trying to recruit volunteers to create a mystical power cone to defeat the Nazis. Unfortunately, most of his fellow students of mystical forces balk at dancing naked in midwinter to channel the power. The head juvenile delinquent is ready to kill anyone he suspects of being a German in retaliation for the death of his brother in action. The best and the worst come out in people.

One particular scene impressed me for its social history. The body of a serviceman on leave is brought to the home of his estranged wife and laid out in her bedroom where his friends come to pay their respects. Since this is where Grace is renting a bed, she and her landlord are forced to sleep in the kitchen while people view the corpse in the bedroom. I found it interesting that corpses were kept at home, even an unwelcome home, as a matter of course in the 1940’s.

A very good description of wartime Newcastle with the murder less compelling than the social history of the area.… (más)

Mystery-cum-horror novel set in World War II England, in a small country village near Wales. A retired American professor, Edwin, with an interest in folklore arrives in the village to study standing stones and barrows which are nearby. He takes a room at the house of Grace Baxter, whose grandmother is a follower of the Old Religion and a "wise woman". Since it's wartime, children have been evacuated from cities and now live in villagers' homes. First there's the disappearance of the young daughter of the blacksmith, then other children, mostly the evacuees go missing. Bizarre murders of adults take place. Edwin and Grace become "detectives" and work together to solve these puzzles; practically everyone in the village is suspected at one time or another. The novel ended on a shocking note!

The author showed great originality and creativity in the deft crafting of his story. I was on tenterhooks.… (más)

3.5 stars

Eric Reed's' The Guardian Stones was not what I expected from Poisoned Pen Press, a publisher I associate with standard mystery series centered on a single detective. In The Guardian Stones, the "detectives," if I can call them that, are Edwin Carpenter, an American professor who has inexplicably decided to go to England in the middle of World War II to investigate the titular stones (think Stonehenge on a much smaller scale), and Grace, a resident of the village those stones "guard." A series of disappearances and other crimes has followed the arrival of several children who have been evacuated from Birmingham to the village as part of Operation Pied Piper, which was intended to protect England's urban children from bombing attacks.

I found the clashing interactions between the street-tough children and their resentful (though mostly well-intentioned) hosts to be one of the most emotionally engaging aspects of the book. I also enjoyed the way in which Reed teases the reader with a variety of possible solutions to the crime wave, including a supernatural explanation, before the final reveal, which I thought was excellent. What brought The Guardian Stones down from 4 to 3.5 stars was its slow beginning, which might well have discouraged a less determined reader. I'm glad my persistence paid off in the end.

I received a free copy of The Guardian Stones through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.… (más)

By Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, authors of the wonderful John, the Lord Chamberlain series, THE GUARDIAN STONES is set in a small Shropshire village with a prehistoric stone circle. Set in 1941, a widowed American professor comes to study the stones and find more than he bargained or as city children, evacuated to the country to escape the bombings may be in more danger than from German bombs. Something or someone evil is stalking the village and the professor and his young landlady attempt to stop whoever or whatever is responsible.… (más)