Thank you Minotaur Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of Agony Hill in exchange for my honest review. I purchased the audiobook for my collection.
Publisher: Minotaur Books / Brilliance Audio
Published: August 6, 2024
Summary:
Set in rural Vermont in the volatile 1960s, Agony Hill is the first novel in a new historical series full of vivid New England atmosphere and the deeply drawn characters that are Sarah Stewart Taylor’s trademark.
In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren’s new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities, and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany.
Warren has barely unpacked when he’s called up to a remote farm on Agony Hill. Former New Yorker and Back-to-the-Lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren’t adding up for Warren. The people of Bethany—from Weber’s enigmatic wife to Warren’s neighbor, widow and amateur detective Alice Bellows — clearly have secrets they’d like to keep, but Warren can’t tell if the truth about Weber’s death is one of them. As he gets to know his new home and grapples with the tragedy that brought him there, Warren is drawn to the people and traditions of small town Vermont, even as he finds darkness amidst the beauty.
My thoughts:
This is the first book in Sarah Stewart Taylor’s new Franklin Warren series and I am a fan! I first became a fan of this author with her Maggie D’Arcy series and love that this one brings new characters, a new setting and a new time period!
Historical mysteries have become a new favorite sub-genre and I have a feeling this just might become one of my new favorite series. Already I am loving the characters we have met and feel that the author has done a magnificent job drawing out the time period of this book. It’s not too often I read books set in the 1960s and I loved being immersed in this world. It’s a volatile time and she’s already started laying the groundwork for some changes that are coming that will bring disruption to the town. The writing is steeped in small-town atmosphere and secrets, and we have just started to scratch the surface of some of those secrets.
I loved that as this is the first book in the series, we are introduced to a lot of characters but focused on just a few. I have a feeling that Detective Franklin Warren and Alice Bellows will be the main characters of this series and that makes me so happy. Both have such interesting back stories that leave me wanting more.
In this first book, the case Warren is involved in isn’t quite as clear cut as it first appears to be. And as Warren and his team dig into the case, with amateur sleuth Alice Bellows doing her part, they all soon find out that the quirky residents of the town aren’t always who they seem to be at first glance.
I loved the way this one played out, with the main mystery solved and some threads left hanging loose. This is why I love reading series…these unresolved threads that take one, two or even multiple books to finally find closure.
Audio thoughts:
This was really good on audio and I thought the narrator, Eric G. Dove, a new-to-me narrator, did a fantastic job bringing this story to life. I hope he continues to narrate the series as I do love consistency when it comes to narrators.
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