After finishing this book, I’m still not sure how I feel about it.  It was an enjoyable read and a short enough book that it didn’t feel like a chore to read.  I also feel like the author was trying to develop larger themes that did not quite make it across.

This book is about an aged detective coming out of retirement to solve one last case (all set against the English countryside in WWII).  Though it sounds like a noir plotline, it is nothing of the sort.  The exposition feels light, though the material it is dealing with is somewhat dark. The perspective of the narration changes throughout the novel in an interesting way. The detective keeps bees as a hobby and the local Anglican minister is an immigrant from South Asia married to an Englishwoman.

These are the kind of details that I feel should be important, and I am sure they were intended to be, but they did not make much of an impression on me.  Perhaps I didn’t read the text closely enough (it wouldn’t be the first time), or maybe the points made were a so on the nose that the larger themes didn’t coalesce for me.  I suppose both could be options.

On the other hand, there were some great passages in the book.  The scene of the old detective bee keeping was great passage, and the description of the the characters arriving in London during WWII was very thought provoking.  Beyond these, the description of how the countryside was affected by the war alone made the book worth reading.