Book Review – In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins

Blurb

Solve a murder, bring a killer to justice… but at what cost?

Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor’s clerk John Davies as his assistant.

When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decides to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous.

Refusing to accept easy answers might not only jeopardise Harry’s chance to be elected coroner permanently, but could, it seems implicate his own family in a crime.

My Review

Being acting coroner means that Harry must answer the call to arms to see a faceless body, and he needs the help of John Davies to do it.  When he reaches the body it’s to discover that the facelessness comes from it having been kept in a lime store, the lime acting against the skin, but it’s also naked and on the rocks, so something already don’t add up.  Procedures aren’t followed and it seems everyone but Harry and John want to just accept the easy answers. As the case unravels, it seems that Harry’s family, family from his mother’s side who he barely knows, may have been more involved than is comfortable for Harry. The case also brings Harry into the circle of Dr Reckitt. Reckitt has an interest in deceases and the use of autopsy to investigate them. It’s a tarnished reputation that does little to enhance Harry’s own reputation. Letters for Lydia also bring him closer to

From the start Harry is considering running for election as the coroner, but that puts him at odds with the original idea from book one that Harry might become a solicitor and take John on to be his articled clerk. As Harry works out possibilities, he’s aware of John’s ambitions and is reticent to let the younger man know of other possibilities because he doesn’t want to divert his path. John, however, thinks Harry is just another rich man who dangled a prospect only to renege.

The murder, for such is it, revolves around a scheme to help people migrate to America, a scheme that may have been undermined by the murder. Emigration is an option that attracts John greatly.

As the facts starts to reveal themselves and the truth is seen, personal problems pull Harry in awkward directions that require him to think again and against about his future.

As always Alis engages the reader and draws a landscape, a history that is vivid and realistic, it’s one of the reasons that I can actually read these books even though I generally dislike historical fiction. The real reason I think, is because Harry and John are so real. I can visualise them, I believe their actions. I also believe they’d both do well to be more honest with each other, but the different levels of their birth seem to make that impossible.

This is the second of the Teifi Valley Coroner series, you can read my review of the first, None So Blind, here.

If you like historical mystery fiction, this is a gold standard. I would highly recommend.