After a slightly disappointing golden age mystery yesterday with When the Wind Blows, I’m back on track today with Still Waters by ECR Lorac. There’s a lot of love for this author in the blogosphere, and I’m delighted that the 1949 Club hosted by Simon and Kaggsy means that I have finally picked her up.

It opens with Caroline Bourne, an artist and writer, looking at a property in the Lake District to be closer to her cousin Kate Hoggett, and Kate’s husband Giles. These two made an appearance along with Lorac’s Inspector Macdonald in an earlier book, but I felt Still Waters worked fine as an entry Lorac novel. I just hope I forget the spoilers for The Theft of the Iron Dogs before I read it (I definitely will forget).

Caroline buys Broadgarth, a smallholding, and negotiates for adjoining woodland with a ruined cottage and a deep quarry pool. This is despite the auctioneer initially ignoring her bid, and although she elevates the price she’s immediately offered £100 more than she paid outside the auction. Already it seems something is afoot…

Yet Caroline is not so suspicious and starts planning her move and which land to work, which to let. Lorac clearly has a love of the Lakes and a knowledge of smallholding, and evokes her scenes beautifully, with just enough detail but not so much as to slow the story down.

The 1949 setting is apparent not only in the £2000 that it cost Caroline to buy all this property and land, but also in references to the post-war smuggling and contraband that is still thriving. Caroline’s cottage has been looted for timber, and people gift each other precious cigarettes. As Caroline teases the serious-minded Giles:

“I have been the instrument which prevented a possible black market malefactor settling in your midst, cornering your eggs and cockerels, bidding for your bacon, skimming your cream, poaching your trout and salmon…”

It’s chasing contraband that brings Inspector Macdonald from Scotland Yard back to Lunesdale. But he quickly finds himself bound up in another mystery. Caroline’s architect friend has been attacked by the quarry:

“He left the ruin and walked on to the quarry pool, and was surprised, as Caroline had been, by its size. It looked ominous, dark and dangerous, with its enclosing ridge of rock, the dripping trees, the rain-pocked water. Macdonald noted the treacherous slippery rocks, the steep fall from the ridge, the brambles and briars, the creak and whisper of swaying boughs and shivering leaves.”

And one of the local husbands is missing:

“Abandoned wives are quite numerous, and Giles knew it, but for a farmer in Lunesdale—or anywhere else for that matter—to leave his land and his cattle was absolutely unheard of. Everybody in the neighbourhood agreed on that point.”

Lorac gently ribs the sexism woven through so many attitudes, throughout the book. Caroline observes:

“I’m a single woman, and I’ve noticed that single women are regarded as less than the dust in these parts.”

Yet women in Still Waters are intelligent, capable, good farmers, witty… Lorac makes her point with the lightest touch.

“‘You are conservative to a degree which is inconsistent with both reason and experience, Giles,’ said Kate.

He smiled tolerantly, quite unoffended with his wife’s vigorous attack.”

There is plenty of humour in the novel, yet any violence is treated with utmost seriousness.

The mystery is well-paced with a believable denouement, and I whizzed through this in an enjoyable afternoon. My high expectations were fully met and I’m looking forward to reading more Lorac soon.