Lexie Conyngham

I've always loved Lexie's writing style in the historical mysteries, but she can turn her hand to anything, as this story shows.

Jail Fever

Amazon.com link

My review - 

A mystery illness is striking the prison populations and killing people within hours. Nobody survives – then a little girl, whose father is in jail, comes down with it. She’s unconscious, for several days. There are teams working night and day to try to find a cure. Nearby, an archaeological dig unearths a seven hundred year-old body and post mortem results are striking.

This thriller is set both in modern times (around the year 2000) and in the medieval past. The stories on these timelines are strangely linked and at times the book is very exciting. There’s a sound archaeological background to this story, and it picks up on some of our modern fears of big companies and their tactics. I also love the man in the cloak! You must read it. It’s so unlike anything else I’ve ever read and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Lexie Conyngham

A change from her historical whodunit series, this is a story of stories. Totally charming.

The War, The Bones and Dr Cowie

Amazon.com

My review -

It's wartime and young Dr Marian Cowie is taking a break from arduous duties in London during the bombing. She is staying in her grandmother's old cottage in a Scottish village near Aberdeen. On her first night a German plane crashes and gouges a chunk from the Fairy Hill and in the disturbed earth she finds a skull. The remains seem to be around twenty years old and Marian starts to ask the locals if anyone knows of somebody who disappeared around that time. The result is a string of stories told to her by the locals.

It took me a while to appreciate that these were stories and not one-sided conversations. When I did, I began to pick up little pieces of the local lore just as Marian did. The Scottish voice comes over beautifully in the telling and it's impossible not to hear it in your head with the accent. Eventually, along with Marian, we discover whose body has been buried in the hill and also who was responsible for putting it there. I found this a charmingly told and witty selection of little tales which all, in their way, threw light on the overall story.

Lexie Conyngham

The author is breaking away from her usual and very successful series of historical detective stories with this. It's amazing!

Windhorse Burning

Amazon.com

My review - 

This story is unlike anything else I have read from this author. It fascinated me and I couldn’t stop reading. Toby’s mother has just died. She was a missionary in Tibet and he finds her diaries. He contacts someone to translate them and make elaborate arrangements for the scattering of her ashes. He has an unhealthy adulation for his mother and from her diaries we see her as a young girl in her teens, enthusiastic and idealistic. Toby treats his mother’s memory as if she were a modern day saint.

There are plenty of other characters in this story, some very appealing and some rather appalling. It demonstrated the fact that a child’s innocence may have tragic results and that another child may well view a parent in unrealistic terms. The ending is unexpected and memorable. The title fascinated me and is explained in the story. I enjoyed this book a great deal.