American editor and author Nora Tierney has a lot going on, from a book deal and pregnancy to stumbling on the site of a high-profile murder, in M.K. Graff’s mystery novel, The Green Remains.
After winning a contest for a three-book deal, Nora and her artist are proofreading her first novel while she is researching for the next installment. Add to this that Nora is also almost nine months pregnant with her dead boyfriend’s baby, and she should have enough to keep her busy.
As a temporary resident of Ramsey Lodge, the ancestral home of her novel’s artist Simon Ramsey, Nora enjoys the beautiful scenery of Bowness-on-Windermere, a Cumbrian village on the shore of England’s largest lake while attempting to find a name for her son. It doesn’t hurt that Simon and his sister Kate pamper her and want her to live with them at least as long as she and Simon are collaborating and by all means, until the baby is born.
However, Nora’s idyllic rest is interrupted when she stumbles upon the dead body of Keith Clarendon, the only son of prominent citizens Sommer and Antonia. When the medical examiner deems Keith’s death murder via rare poison, Detective Ian Travers, Kate’s fiancé, finds himself in the awkward position of questioning Simon’s possible involvement. However, the small community is again rocked by murder when two local drunkards are also found dead with signs of the same poison. Nora is determined to prove Simon’s innocence, but each day she draws closer to her due date and as she conducts her clandestine investigation, each clue takes her closer to the killer.
The romantic relationships in the novel present an interesting contrast.
In the first book in the series, Nora loses her fiancé, Paul, in a plane crash, but she had already “lost” him. She had allowed herself to ignore the negativity in their relationship. In hindsight, she knows she refused to see who her fiancé had truly been. When Kate suggests naming the child after Paul, the true feelings Nora had suppressed rise to the surface. She knows with certainty she could never name the child after his father. She suspects Paul himself had fallen out of love with her, but like her, couldn’t bring himself to break off their engagement.
Nora and Simon are another contrasting couple. In the previous novel, Simon saved Nora from certain death in Oxford while she investigated the accusations of murder made again her friend Val. They also shared a brief physical interlude there as well, and he is the artist for her children’s novels. Her need to clear Simon’s name is both obligatory and emotional. He and Kate have helped Nora in numerous ways, providing support and comfort. They attend birthing classes with her and give her a home at Ramsey Lodge. They paint her future son’s room and put together his crib.
Simon loves Nora and desires more than she is willing to provide.
She chooses to keep their current relationship platonic but often questions that choice. In short, Nora’s torn between her feelings for Simon and for the Oxford detective, Declan Barnes, who worked closely with her on a previous investigation.
Whenever she thinks about Declan, she experiences all of the “new-love” emotions, excitement, trepidation, and uncertainty. However, she simultaneously cannot stop the surge of jealousy she feels when Maeve, a manager at the hotel, flirts with Simon. Nora knows she has no right to these emotions but still cannot stop herself. Simon means security, a real family, while Declan represents passion and desire.
A theme many readers will find familiar is the anxiety of parenthood.
After learning of Paul’s death, Nora soon discovers she’s pregnant. She chose to keep her child and raise him on her own, a gutsy decision that she often questions. Her mind often fills with uncertainty. Nora’s mother lives in Connecticut, and her father drowned years ago when she was a teenager. She carries the burden of guilt over his death because she had turned down his invitation to join him.
The ghost of parenting haunts Nora because she wants to live up to the memory of what a wonderful parent her father truly was. She understands that saying you are going to be a good parent doesn’t really deliver the proof of actually being one. In the meantime, she must face the tragedy of Keith’s death and the grief of his loving parents. The strength of their loss, in a strange way, highlights her desire to be a loving parent.
Facing the death of her only child, Antonia mentally implodes. The loss feels monumental to Nora, and she questions her involvement in the investigation since death seems to surround her pregnancy. She sees how fragile life truly is and how having a partner makes that life more bearable, which in turn makes her wonder how she’ll ever be parent enough for her son when she can’t even choose a name or keep herself out of trouble.
The Green Remains by M.K. Graff won 1st Place in the 2014 CIBA M&M Book Awards for Cozy Mysteries.
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