A Bird in the Hand: The First George and Molly Palmer-Jones Novel

Cleeves, well noted for Vera, Shetland, and others, first wrote a very different series of mysteries that are soon to be newly available in the United States. George and Molly Palmer-Jones are our amateur sleuths. George, retired from the Home Office (we don’t really know what he did while working), and Molly, a retired social worker, make a wonderful team. Steady, trustworthy, George, with authority; warm, sweet, Molly with the ability to get people to talk to her, make an excellent alternative to the police that no one seems to value. Tom French, a young and seemingly popular leader of the local “twitching” community, a group that travels to find rare birds, is found murdered. The father of a local asks George to look into it. The body has been moved and it is not apparent how or why. George, a birdwatcher himself, can maintain a connection to the astonishing rivalries and intrigues involved in this rabidly passionate community, the members of which travel great distances and endure privations at the merest hint of a rare-bird sighting. The lives and personalities of Cleeves’s characters are complicated and unexpectedly overlapping, and while Molly quietly seeks to understand the human aspect of the crime, George travels for information. This is a wonderful example of the genre. The characters are strong and beautifully drawn, and the landscape integral to the story. Best of all, there is a message from the author discussing her circumstances when writing this and critiquing a work that she obviously loves. Happy to say, there will be more to come.