#BookReview-‘A Shroud Of Leaves’ by Rebecca Alexander

About the book…

“Finely observed beautifully written” Daily Mail on ‘The Secrets of Life And Death’

“The victim had been buried in a carved hollow in the grass and shrouded in fallen leaves…”

Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl’s body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago – but her body was never found.

The police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned but never charged.

But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound – and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse – she discovers the story of another mysterious disappearance over a hundred years ago.

Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.

Published on 9th July by Titan Books,  ‘A Shroud Of Leaves’  by Rebecca Alexander is the second in the Sage Westfield Series.

Sage is a forensic archaelogist who is on tenterhooks for her first proper case-that of a missing  teenage girl,found dead and  very carfeully covered in a specific type of leaf, in the grounds of Chorleigh House. The traumatised dog walker who literally fell across the body was alerted to it by her dog , so cleverly was she hidden.

River was a 15 year old girl and the sense of loss of life and respect for the dead is keenly felt by Sage and conveyed so well to the reader-from the details of setting the scene to the onlooking parents,alerted by local media tempered with the need to preserve the scene is very well rendered. The reader’s first experience of Sage is as professional trying to balance her forensic needs, with that of the pathologist and police and to move quickly so that the body can be removed.

After becoming clear that this is a murder investigation,there are worrying flags about this being a repeat murder echoing one from two decades ago-the public and the police turn their attention immediately towards the previous suspect,islated stately home owner Alistair Chorleigh.

But if it was him, why was there such a long gap between the murders?

Where is the body of the previous girl?

When such effort was made to create a shroud over River’s body,why was she left where dog walkers frequently go?

And what is the link with the nearby burial mounds that Sage is involved in excavating? At what point does science fact and superstition meet, and what truth are there in local rumours about the burial mound?

The novel alternates chapters between Sage, and early 20th century diary extracts/narratives from Edwin Masters who came to stay at Chorleigh House and who, it is hinted, is the missing architect/archaelogy student that the Chorleigh family hired to excavate the burrough. If so, does he hold the key to the mysteries of both then and now?

It mixes archaeological facts with forensics without leaving the reader behind(although I confess to having to re-read several parts to make sure that I understood them, in effect it felt like a reader’s archaeological dig, hunting for clues!).

‘A Shroud of Leaves’ is a crime novel, mystery and a study of social class systems which shows that no matter how hard a person tries to erase what they have done, the evidence will always win out in the hunt for the truth.

Sage is an engaging and likeable character, she juggles her personal and professional lives with varying degrees of success throughout the novel; her lover and her child and her job do not always make easy bedfellows.

I loved the New Forest setting, it was so well rendered I felt I could smell the foliage and although I haven’t read Book 1, I don’t feel it was necessary to be able to follow Sage’s storyline. However, I will absolutely be putting ‘A Baby’s Bones’ on my tbr  hitlist!

About the author…

Rebecca Alexander is a psychologist and writer. Rebecca wrote her first book aged nineteen, and since then has been runner up in the Mslexia novel writing competition and the Yeovil Literary Prize 2012.

She is the author of the Jackdaw Hammond series of supernatural crime novels published by Del Rey, The Secrets of Life and Death (2013), The Secrets of Blood and Bone (2014) and The Secrets of Time and Fate (2016).

She lives in Devon.

Links-http://www.rebecca-alexander.co.uk/

Twitter @TitanBooks