In an unusual departure, Sara Woods takes her latest suspense novel back in time to 1947, when Antony Maitland, recently discharged from service, is reading law at the farm of a friend in Yorkshire. But the anticipated pastoral quietude is blemished by four seemingly disparate occurrences—the growth of gossip concerning the revival of local witchcraft, rumors of a treasure of gold plate hidden and then lost during the seventeenth-century Civil War, suspicions of lucrative black market activity in the vicinity, and the death of a woman from arsenic poisoning on a nearby farm. Weaving these incidents together against the rustic background of the Yorkshire countryside in what certainly must be Antony Maitland’s first big case, Miss Woods tells a fascinating and entertaining story that will surely please her many fans. “They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead, I hate the murderer, love him murdered.” —Richard II, Act V, scene vi