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It's June 1941 when retired American professor Edwin Carpenter arrives in Noddweir, an English village on the edge of a forest and beneath a looming hill topped by standing stones. It's the standing stones Carpenter has come to study, but before he even has time to unpack, he finds himself in the middle of a village-wide search for a young girl who has gone missing. Over the next ten days, Carpenter and his landlady Grace are pulled further and further into an investigation that involves multiple murders and more missing children—both children from the village and those who have been evacuated from Birmingham and billeted with the villagers and surrounding farmers. As the body count grows, village secrets past and present emerge, and Noddweir's homegrown evil proves more immediately frightening and deadly than Hitler's.
THE GUARDIAN STONES is set up as an English village cozy with its small, closed circle of characters and amateur detectives, but this novel is much darker than most cozies tend to be. Deeply atmospheric right from the beginning, the novel portrays the festering underbelly of an idyllic village and shows the anger and distrust that can grow so quickly—and damagingly—among neighbors. Superstition and suspicion abound in equal measure, causing unease and creating rifts between grandmothers and granddaughters, husbands and wives, fathers and children, villagers and priest, folklore and modern life. In the end, evil may not triumph, but it definitely leaves scars.
Several things make THE GUARDIAN STONES a satisfying read. First, and of lesser importance, the authors (Eric Reed is the name taken by a husband and wife team),play a bit of fun with the reader. Just as the reader begins to think there are too many characters being introduced too quickly, Carpenter notes feeling overwhelmed by meeting so many villagers and feeling as though he's in a Russian novel. And when the reader wonders why in the world Carpenter is in England studying standing stones when there's a war going on, those thoughts are echoed in the comments and criticisms of the villagers. Throughout the novel, for every question the reader might have, the authors have an answer that they present through the characters. More significantly, while its being 1941 isn't particularly dwelt on, it is nicely evoked in scenes of bare shelves in the village shop and the part the black market and young evacuees play in the overall plot. But most enjoyable is the way the story is smoothly and convincingly told, the way evil is dismissed but keeps creeping in, the way the setting adds to the atmosphere, and most stunningly, the ending which is both unexpected and effective.
That's not to say everything about this novel strikes a perfect note. Names do get tangled a bit, especially at the beginning, simply because they're too similar and some of the characters are a bit too flat. There's also an unexpected and unnecessary romance that seems out of place and out of character, and some of the secrets are revealed rather awkwardly. But overall, the novel rates high marks for well-paced, page-turning storytelling, unsettling darkness, and all-too-human realism.
§ Meredith Frazier, a writer with a background in English literature, lives in Dallas, Texas
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier, June 2016
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