This one took a little while for me to get into because it sort of sidles up to the mystery and is mostly written from the perspective of a young teacher, Tom, and it takes a while to figure out where the book is going. Once it gets there, I was pretty engrossed in the mystery, although I was a bit disappointed with the way the author passes judgement on the young girl, Annet. This book was written in the 1960s and I suppose the author could have been putting words in Tom's head, but it sounded like it was coming from outside the book and to a modern reader it just sounds so, so wrong. I'll put the quote in spoiler tags because it does give away a key point in the mystery.

The author lays the blame on the affair entirely on the young girl:

She wasn’t his victim; he was hers. She had destroyed him by loving him. If she’d never even noticed him, except as a middle-aged man, a father figure, he’d have mastered his feelings for her. But she’d opened to him, she’d loved him, he’d been forced to turn longing and dream into action. No, Annet was nobody’s victim, she had done what she had chosen to do, taken him because he was the weakest, the most helpless, the least effective, the unhappiest of all the men it might have been.

Squick. The girl was maybe 17 when they started their affair.

Edith Pargeter manages to fit in a bit of matchmaking like in the Cadfael books but things are much more nebulous here. ( )

will Annet betray her lover who murdered or maintain 5 lost days

Fairly good book. Of course, the time frame is very out dated but it is interesting the way the characters are developed. It had me guessing who really was the murderer. ( )

I liked it. Ellis Peters seemed to be fantasizing a bit about what it's like to have looks that have all the men falling in love with you. Annet doesn't fit any pretty girl stereotype. ( )

A mystery in modern day (1964) Wales by the author of the Brother Cadfael series, this story is part village mystery and part police procedural. An easy read, and a reasonably disguised villain. ( )