This book was part of my Mailbox Monday and I am glad that I was able to finish it before the week ended! It is a small book of 192 pages but the font was rather small and difficult to read.

It is a bright morning in the village of Ashthorpe and everything seems very spring like with apple blossoms and birds chirping and the description is idyllic. Mary a bright student with a wonderful future in front of her is found dead in a stream of just eighteen inches of water. Was it suicide, did she slip from the bridge and drown or was it murder.

In this my first foray into Sheila Radley's cozy mystery it is almost impossible to see how the end turns out. That part of it was the mystery. The other part of this story that made it interesting for me was the way different people react to tragedy and how people are given the strength to carry on all in their different ways. Whether it was Mary's father plodding on with work just to keep business going, or her estranged brother who was envious of Mary's academic success but at the same time heartbroken over her death, the boyfriend who loved her, the boyfriend who loved her and did not show his feelings knowing he will be rebuffed - all these add a very human element to the story.

An interesting mystery murder read.