The Cipher Garden

When the body of Warren Howe, master landscaper and equally masterful ladies' man, is found hacked apart with a scythe in a garden in Old Sawrey, England, suspicion falls on his wife, Tina, in Edwards's engaging second Lake District mystery (after 2004's The Coffin Trail). But Tina has an alibi, and the case remains open. Years later, the police receive an anonymous note about Howe's murder, and DCI Hannah Scarlett determines to solve the crime. Is a spurned ex-lover responsible for the brutal killing—or Howe's business partner, eager to have both the landscaping firm and Howe's wife to himself? Or maybe Tina's alibi isn't so unshakeable after all. In her search for answers, Hannah uncovers suicide, incest and illicit affairs. Indeed, Hannah finds her own eye wandering toward Daniel Kind, a noted historian who enjoys sleuthing in his spare time—and Daniel, though ostensibly happily partnered with a charming reporter, returns the affection. Nearly every page yields new revelations in this delectable village caper.
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The latest Lake District mystery finds Daniel Kind, Oxford University historian and amateur sleuth, trying to determine why his garden seems almost deliberately designed as a labyrinth. Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett, head of the cold case squad, gets a tip that fingers a suspect in an old murder: the dead man's wife. Slowly, even gracefully, the author weaves the two stories in and around each other until they become one. Mixing cozy and hard-boiled ambience, the series' setting, a quaint English village with big-city problems, takes center stage here, keeping readers off guard by mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar. Perhaps this innovative use of landscape as character eventually will seem quite ordinary, but enjoy it while you can. It's not often the genre offers something genuinely fresh. David Pitt
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