Severn House
May 6, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Sophy is leading a quiet life in the countryside, dreaming of being a writer and moving to London, when her stepmother abruptly abandons her father, leaving a letter after running away with the architect who has been designing a new house for them near Templewood, the family manor in Worcestershire. It’s just the latest upset in Sophy’s life; in 1935 the news is turbulent, with economic distress feeding fascism in Europe and at home. Sir Oswald Mosley is growing popular with many young men, including a fast set that Sophy’s sister Gizi finds attractive. She teases Sophy that she needs to lead a more exciting life. Things do get more exciting, but not in a good way, when Emilie’s body is discovered near the site of the new house.
DI Reardon arrives to investigate the murder, accompanied by DS Thomas Jago, a hotshot young detective who had been assigned to monitor violence in the movement growing around Mosley. He has found the assignment duller than expected. What he really wants to do is join the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard, so he jumps at the chance to be part of the investigation. The detectives need to dig into the relationships in and around Templewood and uncover the details of Emilie’s strangely secretive past.
Meanwhile, Sophy is dismayed as her sister grows close to Fitz, a man who drives a fast car and is toying with Mosley’s movement, even as her brother Sam is trying to get a Jewish woman he met in Germany out of the country that is falling under fascist rule.
This traditional mystery, the sixth in the DI Reardon historical series, is not a fast-paced thriller by design. The characters and their social world are given ample time to develop as the detectives work on filling in Emilie’s missing history. Though the story depicts a vanished era of manor houses and village life, and does so in a stye that fits the Golden Age of British mysteries, it has surprising resonance with the present. Gizi is entranced by brash young men who enjoy the transgressive, brute strength of the Moseley’s message, even as her brother and a concerned Jewish neighbor work hard to bring refugees to safety.
Popular history has tended to minimize the rise of fascist movements in the US and UK prior to World War II in favor of a simpler story of good versus evil. While Eccles avoids relating this thread of the story with a heavy hand, the parallels give this old-fashioned mystery surprising relevance to the present.