Genealogist Natasha Blake accepts a commission from an elderly man to investigate and draw up the family tree of his granddaughter's boyfriend. Although she turns up some not so pleasant things in the Hellier lineage - one being that Alice Hellier was hanged in 1853 for murder. After a couple of further hiccups, the Helliers seem to have come good in that her Alice's grandson became a blacksmith and his son a farmer. She would have liked to have spent more time in investigating the circumstances of the murder but a week had been stipulated by her client and that week is now up. Her client is satisfied with the result, indeed so much so that she is invited to a garden party at Shadwell Manor Farm on the following Sunday to celebrate result, indeed so much so that she is invited to a garden party at Shadwell Manor Farm on the following Sunday to celebrate his son Richard's birthday.
Then she receives an anonymous note stating that 'Cinderella is in the Bluebell Woods at Poacher's Dell', but Natasha is more interested in another note, the one accompanying an airline ticket from her boyfriend. Should she go or not?
Retained by John Hellier to delve further into his family background, she feels it necessary to inform her former client Charles Seagrove of her decision to accept the commission, but she finds Charles Seagrove shot dead in his kitchen garden. Richard Seagrove feels certain that his father's death is connected to the research done by Natasha, and asks her to undertake further investigations. And so Natasha is drawn into a family of secrets - secrets that stretch back through two world wars to Christmas Day 1914.
This was a real puzzle. On the surface an attractive middle class English family, but nothing and no one is what they appear. Brilliantly crafted; I wanted to know the end but I didn't want the book to finish. Definitely on my top ten reads of 2005.
Beautifully read by Karen Ross, who brought Natasha Blake to life for me.
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Lizzie Hayes