Can the past really come back to haunt you?Cambridge, Christmas 1922Posie Parker has cleared a space in her hectic schedule to try to unravel a tragedy in her own family. But Posie’s past is hiding around every turn in the old University town, and she finds herself taking on a new case which is positively teeming with ghosts, shadows and secrets, where nothing is quite what it seems.In a quest to … quite what it seems.
In a quest to find out what happened to Dr William Winter, a brilliant Cambridge doctor who disappeared five years previously, Posie is forced to confront her own painful memories of the Great War.
But just how safe is it really to go digging up the past?
And will Posie get to spend Christmas this year with anything other than Mr Minks, the office cat and a lonely heart for company?
This is a classic Golden Age of Crime mystery which will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie and Downton Abbey. ‘The Vanishing of Dr Winter’ is the fourth book in the delightfully classic Posie Parker Mystery Series, although the novel can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story in its own right.
If you love an action-packed historical cozy crime with a feisty protagonist, download a sample or buy ‘The Vanishing of Dr Winter’ now.
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Great cozy mystery!
The Vanishing of Dr Winter by L.B. Hathaway is the fourth instalment in the Posie Parker mystery series but it works perfectly also on its own. There is a sense of a bigger picture, since the cast of clearly recurring characters all have a history, which is moving and will probably bring some development in future instalments. Posie herself has an ongoing search for the truth about the mysterious sadness of her brother Richard before he left Cambringe for WWI. But all in all this one instalment dealing with Posie’s past on the French front sustains itself perfectly.
The story follows two different plots, the one about this one novel, regarding the disappearance of dr Winter during the war, and a separate one regarding Richard’s mysterious last years in Cambridge before he too left for war, where he lost his life. These are both interesting plots, though I think that Richard’s is a bit more involving, maybe because it’s more personal to Posie.
Dr Winter’s plot is straightforward enough and it presents a couple of repeated ideas that made the events a bit more predictable. But I still enjoyed both threads.
Richard’s thread then offers a supernatural twist at the end that I really never saw coming in a story that – though starting with discussion of ghosts – never seemed to go down that way. Still it didn’t jerk me because the overall atmosphere of the story was very ethereal, with a great working into the mood of that particular British winter atmosphere of rain and darkness and mist. I really like that, and I think it set out the possibility of a supernatural twist even if the story was not supernatural at all.
Overall, it was a very nice Christmas read. I found the recurring cast endearing. I think I’ll read more if I’ll have the chance.