A Dirty Death

Having read a much later book by Rebecca Tope (one of her "Cotswold Mysteries," A Grave in the Cotswolds), I decided to go back to the beginning and read her first book, which also inaugurated her "West Country Mysteries." Set on a dairy farm, our story opens when irascible Guy Beardon is found dead in the slurry pit--where all the cow shit is kept before being sprayed on the fields. It looks like an accident and the police treat it as such, only to find they have shit on their shoes for not treating it as a crime scene when it becomes apparent that Guy was murdered. Two more murders on this and the neighboring farm are what cinch the conclusion that someone is killing people in this lovely pastoral setting, and, although everyone would like to think it's an outsider, all evidence suggests otherwise. Our protagonist is Lilah, Guy's nearly grown daughter who has to run the farm pretty much on her own with only Sam to help (until he is murdered), who Lilah thinks is a hired hand but turns out in her father's will to have been a partner in the farm. Lilah's younger brother and mother are busy with their own dramas--real and imagined--and offer no substantive assistance. Only the local policeman, Denholm Cooper, who was a couple years ahead of Lilah at school, seems to offer a stable point of reference. The cast is filled out by neighbors, previously unknown family, friends, and town characters (notably the uncharitable vicar), who are all keeping secrets of one kind or another. It is one of these secrets that holds the key to solving the murders, and it won't be apparent whose guilty until the very end.  I would give this about a 7 on a 10 point scale. Written with a good eye for detail by an author who grew up on a farm, the writing also well conveys what life is like in a small village where everybody knows everybody else's business.