Grave Concerns

by Rebecca Tope

Overview

With Peaceful Repose Cemetery, Drew Slocombe is determined to revolutionize the entire death industry and make cheap, ecologically sound burials a popular choice. Unfortunately, Drew's gravedigger has just discovered that their cemetery has one too many corpses. The body of an elderly woman has been occupying the field for months before Drew opened for business. The police don't appear to be particularly concerned by the death, and seem to think that the body is 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.

The mystery deepens when Genevieve Slater turns up at Drew's door. Drew has always fought an illicit attraction to Genevieve--an attraction that hasn't faded with time. But it's Drew's reputation for amateur detective work that Genevieve is now interested in. With reasons of her own for not wanting to contact the police, she wants to hire Drew to prove that the body is that of her missing mother. Drew realizes helping her might get him in trouble with the law, but, for a man looking to escape both money worries and marriage problems, Genevieve proves impossible to resist in Grave Concerns, a captivating West Country mystery from Rebecca Tope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466869356
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/29/2014
Series:	West Country Mysteries , #4
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	390 KB

About the Author

Rebecca Tope grew up on a farm and has held a wide variety of jobs, such as a prenatal instructor, marriage counselor, and funeral director, all of which have taught her a great deal about human nature. In 1992, she founded Praxis books, a small British press. She is the author of A Dirty Death, Dark Undertakings, and A Death of a Friend.

Rebecca Tope grew up on a Devon farm and has had a variety of jobs. Among other things, she has worked as an antenatal instructor, a relationship counselor, undertaker’s assistant, and milk recorder. Since 1992, she has been sole proprietor of Praxis Books, a small press which has produced a number of popular titles, including The Poet’s Kit and By Way of Beachy Head. She lives in Herefordshire and is the author of more than twenty mystery books, including A Dirty Death, Dark Undertakings, and Grave Concerns.

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