​​Sometimes you just want a light read, well enough written with a setting that’s interesting and a story that moves nicely from A to B. You are happy to have stock characters and some nice descriptions. Along comes A Necessary Death, set in an obscure hamlet on the road between Philadelphia and Boston in the period between the French and Indian Wars (Seven Years War) and the American Revolution (American War of Independence).

 

A stage coach carrying Penelope Corbitt her son and daughter and brother in law to Penelope’s sister in Boston the coach turns over.

 

Before the accident happens Penelope is not happy. Her husband is lost at sea, presumed dead; her house and possessions have been sold to pay off his debts and her obnoxious brother in law intends to house her in exchange for servitude from her and her children.

 

‘ And this road! The driver had said they would follow the King’s Highway, more or less, all the way to Boston, but this narrow track had a much in common with a highway as a puddle with an ocean. Wet branches slapped against the carriage as they jounced over ruts as deep as a wash kettle.’

 

This coach journey, the inevitable crash and Penelope’s backstory fill the first chapter of A Necessary Death. The chapter ends with the party walking to an inn at the edge of a small town, which would be deep in the forest in weren’t for ‘the King’s Road’.

 

Penelope needs ‘the necessary’:

 

‘At the rear of the garden she scanned the property for an outhouse. A weathered shack hugged the far end of the plantation, near the tavern’s woodlot. She followed the path and pulled open the door. A man dressed all in black sat in front of her.

            “Oh dear, I beg your pardon,” she blurted out, stumbling back and letting the door slam shut. But even as the heat rose in her cheeks, Penelope realised the man inside the privy would never complain about the embarrassment.

            He was quite dead.’

 

Now you are invested in Penelope and how she is going to solve this crime. You have worked out it must be a crime because you have been given the perfect stock character to solve it. Chapter two reinforces that trajectory.

 

Then along comes chapter three. And it’s from another point of view, not Penelope but the innkeeper, the man who’s garden she has already dismissed: ‘whoever managed the garden was behind the times with it. It should have been spaded and planted weeks ago…’

 

Miles Tucker, after being out in the rain competently righting the coach, returns to his tavern to find Penelope cooking and cleaning.

 

‘Her feet were bare, and her blue dress muddy…Miles realized suddenly that she had begun talking the minute she stepped in the room.’

 

And then there is a torrent of words from Penelope, a torrent full of hyper-organisation, presumption and high handedness. We see Penelope from a whole other angle.

 

And, of course, we  know there is going to be a romance and a way out of life with the nasty brother-in-law.

 

And now I’m going to suggest that that there is more to A Necessary Death than a quick, schmaltzy read.

 

As the mystery plot unfolds the people involved, which comes to be the entire township plus farmers from further afield, react to what is happening. It’s not pretty. Prejudice and fear empower those who use the gullibility and weakness of others to act out their own hatreds. An alarming mass of people slip into the vigilante mentality. The rule of law is forcibly set aside…

 

Time for those thoughts we believed we weren’t going to have when we started out with a nice little historical novel cum mystery cum romance.

 

And there is more. As you read I’m sure you will work out who killed the man in the privy. But Penelope and Miles don’t, at least not very quickly. They are not trapped by the prejudices of the townspeople (they are, after all our heroes) but they have their own blind spots and although some of them are of their time some are still prevalent in our own.

 

I leave you to find out which.

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