Books
Weycombe

by G.M. Malliet
Midnight Ink, October 2017, $24.99

This standalone from the gifted G.M. Malliet is a gripping whodunit clothed in Miss Marple garb, but underneath the gentility is a sharp, satiric look at village life. The central character is laid-off BBC personality Jillian White, an American married to a titled Brit. She’s at loose ends at home, unused to being a housewife, and it seems she and her husband are drifting ever further apart.

One morning she stumbles over the body of her next-door neighbor, Anna, and in the village of Weycombe all hell breaks loose. Jillian makes her own investigative way through the village, and along the way Malliet deftly skewers each personality Jillian encounters: the granola-ish housewife next door, the shop owner selling (and wearing) floaty “menopausal” garb, Jillian’s mother-in-law, and her husband (who, it becomes clear, is a spoiled and entitled man). The only character spared is Jillian’s sweet neighbor Rashima, who is a spectacular baker, as well as being a kind and honest person.

Told in the first person, readers would be wise to take anything the narrator says or perceives with a grain of salt. Malliet’s clues are tip-offs to her characters’ psychologies, to which readers will want to pay very close attention. The twisted, tangled web of personalities and the description of village life with all tensions boiling away just below the charming surface, eventually provide an unexpected conclusion to the mystery.

Malliet is enough of a traditionalist to provide a Marple-style wrap-up and she makes use of many of Agatha Christie’s tropes in telling her story, but she’s truly interested in satire. When I relaxed into the idea that this novel was more of a satire than a murder mystery, I enjoyed it far more. I became immersed in the book club fracas over Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, the descriptions of Jillian’s horsey mother-in-law, and as the book deepened and darkened, an explication of Jillian’s own family history. I was absolutely compelled to keep reading. There is, after all, nothing better than a good story, well told.

Robin Agnew
Teri Duerr
5848
Malliet
October 2017
weycombe
24.99
Midnight Ink