Bury Her Deep
Captivating and beautifully written, this third book in the Dandy Gilver mystery series is set in 1920s Scotland. Our heroine, a respectable matron who keeps her sleuthing secret from her uptight husband, motors down to Luckenlaw, a village in Fife, to investigate a series of eldritch events. Every full moon, a dark stranger attacks women and girls on their way home from the Scottish Woman’s Rural Institute meetings. Maddeningly, the victims refuse to speak against their assailant, and somehow these occurrences are related to a centuries-old female corpse being removed from the ancient burial mound, which towers over the village and is at the centre of its enduring folklore. Is the local equivalent to the Women’s Institute secretly a cover for a witches’ coven? Even the vicar seems half-pagan. Joined by Bunty, her stalwart Dalmatian, and her sidekick Alec, who hilariously poses as an effete landscape artiste, Dandy is determined to get to the heart of the mystery.
Reminiscent of a wittier and less savage reworking of The Wicker Man, this book is alternately funny and chilling and works on a number of levels. A most original mystery novel.
