Death Under a Little Sky by Stig Abell (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial for the review copy of Death Under a Little Sky by Stig Abell.

What is the weather like where you live?  The winter in Northeast Wisconsin has been unseasonably mild, but this past week it took a full turn into winter with a blizzard on Friday into Saturday.  Even living in town, it makes you have a sense of isolation when the cold winds are screaming around your house.

Death Under a Little Sky is a story with a sense of isolation.  Jake Jackson has heard from his eccentric uncle on and off through the years.  He finds out that his uncle has died and has left him an isolated property in the country with enough money to keep it up and to keep him fed.  He has had a private detective follow Jake and he knows that Jake’s marriage is in shambles after many miscarriages.  Jake is a 38-year-old detective in London who specializes in cold cases.  He decides to take the life that his uncle has offered him.  He quits his job, separates from his wife, and moves to his uncle’s property, Little Sky.

Jake enjoys living off the grid with no phone or way to contact him.  He swims in his own little lake and enjoys the library that his uncle has left him.  One day on his rambles, he meets a vet named Livia.  They bond over their mutual love of the James Harriot books, All Creatures Great and Small, and start to get to know each other.  Livia is a single mother with a small daughter named Diana.  Jake meets more of his neighbors and participates in a the rural tradition of a hunt for St. Aethelmere’s bones.  They find the bones only to discover they actually are real human bones and not the sticks they started out with.  Whose bones have they discovered, why were they placed there, and how did this person die?

Jake is soon helping the local police officer, Watson, with solving this mystery.  As he gets closer to finding the answers, he also comes closer to losing his life and those he has begun to hold dear.

I really enjoyed this slow burn crime thriller.  It was one of those books that I just couldn’t put down.  I really liked the sense of isolation and the man living alone, becoming part of the land like Thoreau.  I enjoyed slowly meeting the neighbors as Jake did and starting to put the puzzle pieces together.  This book was all about the atmosphere and description of the setting.  I loved the details of Jake walking everywhere, bathing in the lake, and washing his clothes outside.  He also builds himself a sauna.  The characters were also wonderful and natural.  In particular I really loved Jake and Livia.  I did not solve this mystery myself and was really thinking it was one of the red herrings.

I also enjoyed the literary references including Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayer, Shakespeare, etc.

This was Stig Abell’s first novel, and I am looking forward to reading what he writes next.