From the first novel in The Detective’s Daughter series by Lesley Thomson, I was hooked by her fascinating characters and fresh premise. Late-shift train engineer on the London tube, Jack Harmon was instantly—and remains—one of my favorite fictional characters. Jack has a unique skill: He can spot what he calls “true hosts,” those who have or are about to commit murder. Not to be outdone, Jack’s partner, professional cleaner Stella Darnell, has inherited a knack for solving murders from her detective father.
Thomson’s latest, The Mystery of Yew Tree House, takes readers on a sojourn to 1940, where recently widowed Adelaide Stride is raising her two daughters alone at Yew Tree House. Beyond her walls, the country battles the ongoing threat of German invasion. But it’s not the foreigners she fears. She’s surrounded by enemies posing as friends, and while the war rages, she grows sure that something terrible is about to happen at home.
Almost 85 years later, Stella Darnell and Jack Harmon load up his seven-year-old twins, Bella and Justin, and head to a rented vacation home, Yew Tree House. The trip is fraught with underlying stress. Stella and Jack hope the time away will help them determine if they can live together as a family. To solidify a future. But the long past is ever-present. Two of its original residents, elderly sisters Rosa and Stevie Stride live in an apartment in the home. Not long after they arrive, Stella discovers that Jack has a secret motive for choosing that town for their trip.
Late-shift train engineer on the London tube, Jack Harmon was instantly—and remains—one of my favorite fictional characters.
When Justin and Bella, who fancies herself a detective, find a skeleton in a war-era pillbox at the bottom of the garden, the bullet hole in the skull means only one thing. Murder.
The discovery triggers the unraveling of a mystery eighty years in the making. Soon, Yew Tree House begins to reveal its secrets, and Stella learns that Adelaide, the mother of Rosa and Stevie, was right to have been worried all those years ago. The fighting might have been happening abroad in 1940, but the true enemy was always much closer to home.
At the first whiff of Stella and Jack’s trouble, their friend, tabloid reporter Lucy May, arrives and plies her own brand of detecting to the ancient murder and the more recent killing of the town’s elderly rector.
With two precocious children in tow, Stella, Jack, and Lucy May scrub away at stains of the past to expose long-buried truths and prevent more deaths from being added to the old home’s troubled history.
The Mystery of Yew Tree House is the ninth novel in the series that began with The Detective’s Daughter. Lesley Thomson has created unique characters trying to navigate blended modern family dynamics, careers, complicated pasts, and a talent for finding themselves in a mess—and knowing just how to clean it up. Although each novel stands on its own, if you’re looking for a new series to add to your must-reads, I recommend starting with the first book. Not only is The Detective’s Daughter a spectacular novel, but you’ll learn great insight into both Stella and Jack’s characters. Thomson has also written four standalone novels.
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