The Body on the Doorstep by A.J. Mackenzie, Book Review

Do you feel you never fulfilled your potential, that you are merely treading water or marking time? Inject some excitement into your life by meddling in a dangerous web of intrigue, stick your nose in where it’s not wanted, like in a dangerous smuggling ring, for example. At least that’s what the Reverend Hardcastle, vicar in Romney Marsh, Kent does.

I guess midlife crisis in 1796 affected people in pretty much the same way as it does today. If it makes you reach for the bottle more often than is good for you, if you are disillusioned with your stalled career and are pining for excitement and a way to use your considerable acumen and intelligence, then you and Reverend Hardcastle have much in common. In ‘The Body on the Doorstep’ it’s hard to tell what adds more frisson to our protagonist’s life: the uncovering of a dastardly plot, the discovery of a murdered body on his doorstep or the collaboration with the lively widow Mrs Chaytor.

It’s a dangerous business gathering information during unstable times in a community where everyone benefits from the enterprise of smuggling and where you can’t tell who is a traitor or who is really your ally. Is smuggling truly the reason for three murders? The intrepid Hardcastle does not give up snooping, even when his life is endangered and a senior clergyman threatens to move him to Hereford if he doesn’t desist from his investigation. ‘Nothing ever happens in Herefordshire, and there will be no opportunities for you to become involved in mischief,’ the exasperated Dean of Canterbury says. Having lived in Herefordshire for sixteen years, I can attest to the fact that not much ever happens there, however, I would also like to point out that Herefordians are much nicer than the inhabitants of Romney Marsh in the late 1800s, and certainly, on the whole, less dangerous.

Will the Reverend Hardcastle evade his attackers and succeed in unravelling the fiendishly complicated conspiracy?

The Anglo-Canadian couple, Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel, wrote The Body on the Doorstep under the pseudonym of A. J. MacKenzie. Having authored a number of non fiction books, this is their first foray into fiction. They chose the setting of Romney Marsh in Kent, not only because they had enjoyed living there in the past, but found its history and relative isolation an evocative setting for a crime novel.

Published on April 21^st 2016, The Body on the Doorstep, A Romney Marsh Mystery is published by Zaffre, hardback, £18.99

(Indiana Brown)