Pamela Dorman Books
Published June 10, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Nicola Bridge, a Liverpool detective, has just relocated to the rural village of Fleetcombe in an effort to save her failing marriage when she’s landed with a shocking murder. A naked corpse has been found tied to a chair in the middle of a country road with a set of antlers affixed to his head like some sort of folkloric figure. She needs to solve it quickly before it becomes tabloid fodder, and she has to prove herself even though she’s given very little to work with. She only has two detectives to assist her: DC Harry Ward, who is young and inexperienced if keen, and Mel, who is glum and reluctant to leave his desk.
The first task is to identify the victim and get any forensic information available from the strikingly clean scene. The second is to get to know the potential suspects and the deep-seated motives that are hidden beneath a placid village surface. There’s a non-binary hairdresser who seems unusually anxious, working at a salon that has some suspicious business practices. There’s the pub-goer nobody likes who got into a fight with the victim on the night of the murder. And there’s a young girl who spends much of time watching things unfold as she avoids her dysfunctional home life and becomes a key, if reluctant, witness.
If this sounds like a British television mystery, it’s not surprising: the author was the creator of Broadchurch among other popular television dramas. The mood is taut and urgent, the setting bucolic with sinister overtones, the characters stock villagers who have enough psychological development to be complicated humans, and the detective saddled with a troubled home life and a punishing work schedule. The murder is far more elaborate than necessary for the disposing of an enemy, as is so often the case in crime fiction, but it makes unraveling the mystery more puzzling and less disturbing than a more realistic scenario would be. Though Nicola is provided little support from her superiors, she makes the best of it as her unprepossessing team comes together, each revealing their strengths in a satisfying way. There’s likely enough foundation here to launch a Season Two.
It’s not cozy – this is not the sort of village you’d want to live in, and the villagers’ eccentricities are not especially heart-warming – but as a traditional mystery it has the familiar elements of a well-produced BritBox drama. Those who enjoy British crime dramas will likely find Death at the White Hart very much their cup of tea.