This was an intriguing premise for a murder mystery with Frances being obsessed throughout her life by a prophecy that she would be murdered and being suspicious of everyone in the village she has lived throughout her life. Told both in present day from the viewpoint of her great niece Annie who has been summonsed to the village regarding Frances’s will and from extracts from Frances’s diary from back in the sixties leading up the time one of her closest friends mysteriously disappeared. It was very easy to feel suspicious of the villagers especially as there were families where several generations still lived there, the elder of which linked back to extracts in the diary. Annie’s main rival for the inheritance was an extremely strange character as was his wife and I don’t think I would have trusted them easily if I were Annie. For me personally I found the mystery of the missing friend more compelling than Frances’s murder as she came across as quite a complicated character. Although the diary extracts offered a good insight into Frances’s mind I would have liked to have seen more info from the dossiers she composed on her friends and neighbours, I guess I had a preconception this might be more a Janice Hallett style book but it’s not. I did enjoy discovering the different dynamics of the villagers and some of their shady secrets, it’s definitely not a quiet village so as a character read it’s good but a slow burner on the crime side. 7/10

Annie's Great Aunt Frances has sent for her. Reclusive, eccentric Great Aunt Frances. Whom Annie has never met.

Great Aunt Frances owns the house that Annie and her mother Laura live in. So they suppose it's something to do with her will.

But Annie never gets to meet Great Aunt Frances, because she's dead.

And she's been predicting her death for the last sixty years. Because Great Aunt Frances believed that she would be murdered for what she knew...

Brilliant