"Centred on a country estate murder, this captivating crime mystery is steeped in the intrigue of character and place."
Set around an historic country estate on the edge of an affluent Cotswolds village, Bonnie Burke-Patel’s I Died at Fallow Hall tingles with the measured tension of a murder mystery, and the lives of its two central characters — individuals who’ve come to the village for a fresh start whose backstories are richly complex, and whose futures might tangle together.
It’s cleverly suspenseful, with a compelling tone and perspective — we see Anna, the protagonist, through her introspective eyes, as she also looks outward, seeking to become part of the community she’s moved to. After retiring as a ballerina at the age of 27, Anna gardens for Lord Blackwaite, custodian of Fallow Hall.
It’s while gardening that Anna unearths the bones of a woman who’d received a gunshot to the head some decades ago, with the narrative slipping between the present-day, as a DI recently arrived from the big smoke investigates the case, and 1967, when the murder took place.
Courtesy of the DI’s grief-stricken character, and themes of identity, race and gender, additional layers come to light as I Died at Fallow Hall wends to an unexpected conclusion. For example, Anna knows “that women are always to watch themselves – to know precisely how they look as they cross the room. They are to watch their own lives and to perform their womanhood”, and so “she wants to put her fingers under the edges and peel it back”.
It’s also fair to say that with I Died at Fallow Hall Bonnie Burke-Patel has crafted an enthralling novel that peels back layers of mystery and emotional depth in a thoroughly satisfying, well-formed story.
Anna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides. But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted. With it comes Detective Inspector Hitesh Mistry, who has his own reasons for a new start in the village of Upper Magna.
Drawn in spite of herself to this unknown woman from another time, Anna is determined to uncover her identity and gain recognition for her, if not justice. As threats to Anna and her new life grow closer, she and DI MIstry will find that this murder is inextricably bound up with issues of gender, family, community, race and British identity itself – all as relevant in decades past as they are to Anna today.
I Died at Fallow Hall features in the following genres: Audiobooks of the Month, Crime and Mystery, General Fiction, Romance / Relationship Stories, Thriller and Suspense, Classic crime and mystery fiction, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, Crime and mystery: police procedural, Psychological thriller, Romantic suspense, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes
I Died at Fallow Hall is available in Paperback, Hardback, Audiobook
I Died at Fallow Hall was written by Bonnie Burke-Patel and published by Bedford Square Publishers
I Died at Fallow Hall has 256 pages
£8.99
