On the island of Albany of the coast of Dorset, much digging is going on. The island thrives on their quarry, others intend to exploit the oil buried under the land and Martin Cotterill, archaeologist/detective, just wants to excavate an old tumulus. And you’ll never guess what, when he enters the old burial mound, there’s a fresh body.

The patriarch of one of the island families is dead, just after returning from a long trip to Europe. But as Cotterill investigates, heading straight into trouble, a young couple head away from the island in search of some crucial evidence. But things can’t be that easy, can it?

It’s been a while since I dipped into my pile of Green Penguins, and it’s time for an obscure one. I’ve often seen copies of John Trench’s first novel featuring Cotterill, the oddly named Docken Dead, but when I saw a copy of this, which I think is much rarer, I thought I’d take a look.

Trench, it seems, wrote three mysteries, Docken Dead, this one and (possibly) What Rough Beast, before switching genres for a few more books. So it shouldn’t be too hard to read the complete Cotterill series. Sorry, let me correct that, it shouldn’t be too hard to collect the complete series. Reading it, on the other hand… well, I’m not going to read the rest because this one is really dull.

Cotterill, while supposedly the sleuth, disappears at the halfway mark, with the young couple taking over in an exceptionally tedious tour around south England. The woman of the couple is particularly annoying as her affections seem to ricochet around the cast as the book progresses.

I’m not going to say an awful lot more about this – it’s just really dull. There’s not an awful lot of detection on show, and the murderer is pretty obvious, even if I wasn’t particularly paying attention from about page 120… I’d give a bit more analysis but I’m reading a much better book at the moment and I’d rather like to get back to it…