Sage Westfield, Rebecca Alexander's protagonist in the recently released A Baby's Bones reminds me of Alaskan sleuth Kate Shugak. I was first introduced to Kate last fall. I'm not sure what it is about Sage, and maybe it is only peripherally that the two women are alike, but the two characters are reminiscent of each other. They have a very similar spirit of independence, both has a cerebral approach to the mystery at hand and the two women are not what we normally expect to see in a traditional mystery.
Kate is petite but a force to be reckoned with. She is a former D.A. investigator who has moved home to the National Park in Alaska to be closer to her Aleut roots. She is methodical and precise in how she orders her life and pretty fearless. Sage also has a slightly unconventional background. Her father is not just an Isle of Wight islander, but a West-Wighter coming from a tiny hamlet called Five Houses. Her mother is from Kazakhstan rendering Sage's features exotic to the point that no one believes she is a native of the island. Her wide cheekbones and almond shaped eyes hint at her Turkic heritage. And like Kate, Sage has only recently returned to the island. Educated as an archaeologist it is work on a local excavation which will involve her in a centuries old murder mystery. And one other thing about Sage and her personal life . . . she is very pregnant and very single having fallen for a man with (unknown to her at the time) a wife and children.
Sage has been called in to excavate a Tudor era well that had been filled with Medieval rubbish. The family living in the historical manor house had only wanted to build an extension on their home but had to have an archaeological survey done before they could begin their work. What had been assumed would be simply a very conventional and ordinary dig turns out to unearth more than just a few pieces of broken pottery. It is only the start of a series of problems. Especially when Sage and her two students find bones in the rubbish. The bones appear to belong to a woman and a baby and they have not been recently buried there. It still seems as though it might be simple and very standard work of pulling up the finds and noting them and then filling the well back in, but very curious things begin to happen. It doesn't help that the manor house already has a number eerie stories and a few myths attached to its long history.
This is a dual narrative novel, two stories separated by centuries told in parallel. Sage's story is set on the Isle of Wight today but interspersed with her excavation and the drama surrounding her work and life in the Manor are diary entries and daily accounts written by the steward of the 16th-century Lord Banstock, the previous (hundreds of years removed) owner. Vincent, the author of the accounts is the bastard brother of the Lord of the Manor, so he has an insider's and family view of the inhabitants of the manor and island.
The story is tinged with elements of the supernatural with the stories surrounding the manor and the feeling of dread contemporary residents and visitors have. There are eerie wails and sicknesses attached to the house. Are there really ghosts, or is it just stories and our imaginations filling in the blanks? The diary entries flesh our some of the history and backstory so the reader gets more details yet follows Sage as she investigates the history of the manor and tries to find out who the bones might have belonged to and why they ended up in a well and not in a proper burial plot.
All the elements work really well together and both storylines are absorbing. Of course it is Sage who really pulls the story off. She is smart and likable but also very human and her situation shows how messy life can be even for someone as savvy as an academically minded 21st century woman. I do hope this is only the first book in what has lots of potential for a continuing story. Thanks to Titan books for sending this my way. Every so often a surprise will come in the mail from them and this author has been a happy discovery for me.