"Bones Buried Deep" by Emma Jameson

It’s June of 1940. Dunkirk has happened. France had surrendered. The day of the formal surrender – June 22, 1940 – is approaching. And in Britain, there’s a collective holding of breath. What happens now? 

For Dr. Benjamin Bones, working in the village of Birdswing in Cornwall, what happens is another murder. A body is found in a stream nearby. It’s finally identified as that of a young man from Plymouth, and he’s been kicked and beaten to death. The case takes on a different overtone when the body is identified – a young Jewish man, the sole support of his young brothers and sisters.

 

The discovery brings out the best and the worst in the local residents. Dr. Bones, and his great love Lady Juliet Linton, are surprised by the depth of anti-Semitic feeling from the people they like and thought they knew. It seems particularly virulent among the more upper-class crowd who gather at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth, already infiltrated by Lady Juliet’s errant husband working undercover for the British government. But what happened to the young man?

 

Emma Jameson

Bones is joined by the official investigator, a detective from Plymouth who himself is Jewish and knows firsthand what discrimination is like in the police department. Lady Juliet is not to be left out, and she finds innovative ways to investigate on her own.

 

Bones Buried Deep  is the fourth of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). 

 

This installment in the Dr. Bones series, like its predecessors, is leavened by humor (Jameson has created a great comic detective with Lady Juliet). And humor is definitely needed in what would be a dark tale indeed without it, a tale of vicious discrimination, death, black marketing, and the overhand of war.

 

Related:

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Bones in the Blackout by Emma Jameson.

 Bones at the Manor House by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Technological Poverty – Matthew Walther at The Lamp.

 

A Quiet Refusal to Compromise – Elizabeth Corey at Law & Liberty.

 

The Novel That Kept a British Prime Minister Up All Night – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Art is the Signature of Man – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why Essex is Britain’s most right-wing county – Daniel Dieppe at the Critic Magazine.

“Bones at the Manor House” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones, assigned at the beginning of World War II to be the resident physician for the village of Birdswing in Cornwall and nearby environs, finds himself in a second murder investigation. The first (Bones in the Blackout) was been that of his wife on the evening they first arrived in the village. This time, he’s called to examine a body at Belsham Manor, which looks like suicide. Or, as Dr. Bones soon realizes, a murder designed by the manor’s servants to look like suicide.  

Lady Juliet, who lives in Birdswing in her own manor with her mother, has discovered she’s attracted to the doctor and had assisted him in helping solve the first murder. She has her own problems, however, having been deserted by a worthless cad of a husband who married her for her money and then promptly disappeared. Everyone gets surprised, however, when the husband unexpectedly shows up, and Lady Juliet learns she must continue the pretense of a happy marriage for wartime security purposes.

 

Emma Jameson

The murder victim has had a reputation of being something of a ladies’ man, except no one knows in this case if the lady in question is a servant or the lady of the manor. The local air raid warden is doubling as a police detective (there’s a manpower shortage, after all) and is ready to arrest the man’s wife, who aids in the investigation by confessing. Dr. Bones is convinced the confession is designed to protect her own family. 

 

Bones at the Manor House is the second of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). This second novel in the series is fast-paced and highly readable, with something of a “locked room” air about it, but I found credulity stretched a bit when the scientific Dr. Bones seems to rather eagerly join into a séance and using a Ouija Board.

 

But the story is fun and officially a “cozy” read, with virtually no violence (other than the finding of the dead man). But a fan of the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, I’m looking forward to the next two in the Dr. Bones series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Bones in the Blackout by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Mr. Twiddle goes west – Jeffrey Streeter at English Republic of Letters.

 

Brits have not lost their appetite for freedom – Emma Schubart at The Critic Magazine.

“Bones in the Blackout” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones is a young, married physician who volunteers for active duty when Germany invades Poland in September 1939. He expects to be assigned to the medical crops. Instead, his occupation is deemed critical, and he’s sent to the small village of Birdswing in Cornwall. Coincidentally, it’s the same town his wife left some years before – and never returned. She’s also leaving behind in London the man she’d been having an affair with – and it looks like this assignment will be make-it-or-break-it for their marriage. 

Except events never proceed that far. As soon as they arrive in the town that first evening, when everything is blacked out because of the war, a hit-and-run lorry seemingly comes from nowhere and plows into the couple, jilling here and shattering the young doctor’s leg.  

 

It looked like an accident, but Ben has his doubts. As he recovers, he finds an anonymous note left on his pillow at the pub where’s staying. The writer is apologizing for Ben’s injury; the only target had been his wife.

 

Ben begins to look into his wife’s death and the death of another young woman, whose death also appeared to be an accident involving leaking gas in her home. He’s assisted by Lady Juliet, who lives in the local manor, who develops a crush on the young doctor without him realizing it. As he gets deeper into recent local history and the secrets lying buried, he finds that his dead wife had plenty of enemies in the village. And the danger may not be over.

 

Bones in the Blackout is the first of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the “Blue” series, and I thought I’d try her other detective series. I’m glad I did – Jameson seems to catch the early years of World War II on the home front exactly right and Dr. Bones is just as engaging as her contemporary London police detectives.

 

Bones in the Blackout is a thoroughly enjoyable story, full of unexpected twists and turns and highlighted by a thriller of an ending. I’m looking forward to reading the next three in the series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Don’t trust the BBC on America – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberalism Without Illusions – William Galston at Democracy.

 

When the Internet Was a Place – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

An American Greatness: Willa Cather’s “O, Pioneers!” –Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Loyalist Who Gave Birth to His Nightmare – Richard Briles Moriarty at Journal of the American Revolution. 

The Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Long-Forgotten Rubens Found in Paris Mansion – Jo Lawson-Tancred at Artnet.