The first half of this was excellent as Ramsay gradually got a picture of the kind of woman the victim was, but then it began to drag. The conclusion was certainly not the one I was expecting, so points for misdirection, but the motivation of the murderer was not really something the reader could have anticipated. ( )

Dorothea Cassidy is not everybody's idea of a vicar's wife. She is much younger than her husband and an unlikely candidate for murder. Thursdays are the day when she "does her own thing" and thursday night is when she was last seen.

Stephen Ramsay is first alerted to Dorothea's disappearance by his aunt who lives in a retirement village where Dorothea was supposed to have given a talk in the evening. It is another 12 hours before her body is discovered in a local park. The circumstances are complicated by a music fair running over a number of days.

Stephen tries to put together a timeline relating to when Dorothea was last seen. She had last been involved with a child protection case being managed by a local social worker.

These are very readable, and credible stories. Recommended. ( )

Dorothea Cassidy, the middle-aged vicar's much-younger wife, has been murdered. Everyone loved her -- well, almost everyone -- so who would want to kill her? She had interacted with a wide variety of people that day. Every Thursday was "her" day to tend to her projects. Trained as a social worker and filled with altruism, she got involved in lots of causes and cases and ruffled quite a few feathers. Which of them made someone mad enough to kill her? And what does it mean when another body is found?

This short (215 page) book was a nice nuts-and-bolts whodunit. The characters are less developed than in the more recent Shetland Island novels by the author, but the plot was clever. There were lots of possible suspects who clearly had secrets -- the question being "is it the big secret?" as in being the murderer -- and a fair number of red herrings were thrown into the mix. I did not guess whodunit until the actual moment of the arrest.

Cleeves also captures the atmosphere of the village carnival quite splendidly, and it makes a marvelous backdrop for some of the action.

I must say, the basic premise is a lot like the previous book in this series: a woman who everyone supposedly loves is murdered, but it turns out she's a bit of a busybody. Mrs. Cassidy's involvement in other people's affairs is more professional than nosy, but the same kind of dynamic appears to be in operation. ( )