Book Review The Cipher Garden

The Cipher Garden

Martin Edwards

(Allison and Busby, 2006)

Five years after gardener and lothario Warren Howe was murdered by a mysterious hooded figure the police receive an anonymous tip-off. The case lands on the desk of DCI Hannah Scarlett of the local cold case review team, setting off an investigation that will stir up long held conflicts in a sleepy Lakeland village. Meanwhile historian Daniel Kind is trying to unravel a mystery surrounding his dream home in the Lakes linked to its unhappy past; his investigations also draw him uncomfortably close to more recent crimes.

Martin Edwards’s Lake District set mysteries are one of the strongest of the current crop of those British crime novels that are inaccurately described as ‘cosy’. There is nothing remotely twee about the dark and disturbing stories he tells.

This book, like all his others, is marked by a plot that springs a number of satisfying surprises on the reader and Edwards shows an admirable level of psychological insight in his characterisation. Order may be restored by the end of the book in the best tradition of the sub-genre, but the process of doing so has its costs and none of his recurring characters return to their default setting at the novel’s end.

The setting and characters may be traditional; a photogenic village with a dark past and a pair of central characters who may, or may not be attracted to each other; but the approach Edwards takes is anything but.

This is shown nowhere more than in his use of the Lakes as a setting, they make a perfect backdrop for a story of deceit, betrayal and murder. At least they do in the hands of a writer who understands just why it was the poets drawn to the region found darkness as well as beauty in its remarkable landscape.