Grave Concerns

by Rebecca Tope

Overview

With Peaceful Repose Cemetery, Drew Slocombe is determined to revolutionise the entire death industry and make ecologically sound burials a popular choice. Unfortunately, his gravedigger has just discovered that their cemetery has one too many corpses – that of an elderly woman. The police don’t appear to be particularly concerned and seem to think it’s that of a vagrant. But for Drew things don’t add up: even if the woman died a natural death, someone was obviously responsible for burying her.

When Genevieve Slater, a woman from Drew’s past, turns up at his door, and asks him to help prove that the body is that of her missing mother, the mystery deepens. Why does Genevieve not go to the police with her concerns? All Drew’s skills as an amateur detective will be needed if he is to get to the truth . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780749025717
Publisher:	Allison & Busby, Limited
Publication date:	11/21/2019
Series:	West Country Mysteries , #4
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	880,871
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rebecca Tope is the author of three bestselling crime series, set in the Cotswolds, Lake District and West Country. She lives on a smallholding in rural Herefordshire, where she enjoys the silence and plants a lot of trees.

Editorial Reviews

When undertaker Drew Slocome (who returns from Rebecca Tope's Dark Undertakings) discovers an extra body in his environmentally conscious Peaceful Repose Cemetery, he jumps at the chance to investigate, because "mysteries existed to be solved like Everest." The police only know that the unidentified old woman didn't die of natural causes, and as for what the townsfolk know well, several of them just aren't telling in Grave Concerns. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Funeral director Drew Slocombe (Dark Undertakings, 2001, etc.), hard up for funds, bickering with his wife, and determined to make a go of his new venture-England's only naturopathic burial grounds-is horrified to learn when his part-time gravedigger unearths the evidence that someone conducted an unauthorized interment on his property quite a while ago. Who was the elderly lady with the long white hair and no underwear? Genevieve Slater, who once lost out on a house bid to Drew, thinks it may be her globetrotting mum. But who buried Gwen so neatly with hands clasped and eyes sweetly closed? As Drew digs for the answer with the help of his forceful assistant Maggs, he becomes more and more enmeshed with the engaging Genevieve. The result: more arguments with his wife and a good deal of confusion over Genevieve's relationships with her husband Willard and her long-dead sibling, as well as her mother's stint as an Egyptian tour guide, which ended when a terrorist murdered one of her charges. And what to make of that pesky doctor who keeps popping 'round, that eyewitness who may be remembering wrong, and Drew's final-rest competitor, who may be desecrating his gravesites with smelly dead animals? With minimal help from the police and a good bit of luck, Drew uncovers everyone's secrets in time but keeps one of his own from his wife. The only likable character is Drew's baby daughter, and even she has her cranky moments. Solid plotting, but it would have helped to have someone above the age of three to root for.

Kirkus Reviews