Rating: 5 out of 5

This was a very different style of murder mystery. Enjoyable. Well written. Quirky. And both easy and quick to read. Perfect holiday fodder

Highlighted passages:

‘She was a little uncomfortable, at least to begin with. We have a great reticence, talking about death, in this country. I always say it’s a shame we don’t adopt the practice of the Swiss, who invented what they call the Café Mortel, an opportunity to discuss one’s mortality over tea and cake.’

suggested that the very fabric of a house, the bricks and mortar, might be able to absorb and ‘play back’ the various emotions, including the horrors, that it had witnessed. that’s what I felt about my family homne

Hawthorne was clever and he was well educated but he didn’t strike me as having any interior imaginative life at all.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account