This is the first in a series of whodunnits set in the Lake District, one of my favourite areas in the country. Daniel Kind is a disillusioned Oxford academic historian who moves to the Lake District with his partner journalist Miranda, buying a cottage with connections to the history of his family and their knowledge of a boy Daniel met in his childhood on a family holiday, who later died in tragic and controversial circumstances after the horrific murder of a young woman. Senior policewoman Hannah Scarlett looks into the case as the first of a series of cold case reviews. Daniel, as the son of the senior policeman with whom Hannah worked on the original case, creates ripples in the local community through his questions about the case. The final resolution is suitably unexpected, with some late twists and turns. The characters are well drawn, though I'm not sure yet if I quite like Daniel. But interesting enough for me to read subsequent novels in the series. ( )

I liked the Oxford historian and the police inspector and wanted to see where their arc was going. But I'm not sure I'm going to read another book because I lost interest in the crime under discussion and found the solution unconvincing. ( )

read at Greenwood - difficult to engage; something bothered me about the writing ( )

I started to read it and was repulsed. ( )

This book was recommended to me as a first book in a police procedural series set in the UK, and, in this case, in the Lake District. I couldn't resist the title so I decided to read it. The book is very good indeed. We are introduced to quite a different protagonist. Daniel Kind is an Oxford don whose expertise is history. He has worked hard and has achieved tenure at Oxford University. Daniel has a backstory that is revealed intermittently throughout the book. To simplify, his father was a well-known detective in the police force who left his wife and family when Daniel was 12. His sister was a couple of years older. From that day forward his mother would not allow her children to speak of their father. We also find out that Daniel lost a previous lover, and the story behind that tragic loss is slowly revealed to us as the story progresses. When we meet Daniel he is on a road trip with his new girlfriend by the name of Miranda. They are travelling through the Lake District and see a cabin that is for sale. This cabin used to be the home of Daniel's friend Barrie Gilpen. On a whim they decide to chuck their lives in London and Oxford and move to the cottage to "get away from everything." The move turns out be a good thing for Daniel, but he does become embroiled in an old cold case that involved his friend Barry. Daniel, being the historian that he is, cannot help himself and begins to research this case to discover the truth. The main thing driving him on was that this was an old case of his father's which had ended unsatisfactorily . Daniel meets DCI Hannah Scarlett who has recently been put in charge of a new cold case division in the Lake District, and as Hannah used to work with Daniel's father, and as she had been involved in the original case, she decides to have her new team pursue this cold case first. Daniel and Hannah find each other during their separate investigations, and discover that they are a very effective crime-fighting team. After the whole village and countryside have been upset by the long-buried secrets that they uncover, they finally are able to solve this case. By the way the Coffin Trail is an old trail from centuries ago that mourners used to follow in order to inter their dead because there was no burial place in Brackdale, and this old Coffin Trail becomes integral to the story when foul murder is committed in Brackdale in the 21st century. The book is very well-written, and I have to admit that I did not figure out the murderer until it was revealed in the book. I'm definitely going to read more in this series. ( )