“Vanity, like murder, will out,” wrote Hannah Cowley over two hundred years ago. In this story of a man’s wish to establish a peaceful and beautiful bird sanctuary, both certainly come out, muddled and mixed as they so often are with the motives of greed, jealousy, revenge and irrational self-justification. What starts as a simple plan ends with death, murders which become the task of Inspector Hole to solve on his own doorstep. The story of the developing private wetlands reserve becomes the backcloth to a range of petty feudings which develop serious consequences. Amidst the mallards and greylags, the Buicks and the pochards, one flight of birds manages to add its voice to the complex series of clues by which the Inspector, aided by his wife the local junior school head, is able to reach the unexpected but successful conclusion to this ‘traditional’ village-based mystery, set on the banks of the River Severn.
