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Bury Her Deep is the third of Catriona McPherson’s detective novels set in 1920s Scotland and featuring her amateur sleuth Dandy Gilver.

I actually started this during the last few hours of the Readathon in April but didn’t finish it for quite a while afterwards, which is strange as I normally gallop through this sort of book and had enjoyed the previous two volumes. I’m not going to say that I didn’t enjoy this one at all, but something jarred with me.

I don’t think its Dandy herself although I was becoming a bit weary of her pulling the wool over her husband’s eyes about her sideline in detecting with her chum Alec, and was glad (not a major spoiler here) that this has now been resolved sensibly.

I don’t even think it was the mystery itself, which was quite interesting – who is attacking the ladies of Fife village on their way home from the Rural Women’s Institute meetings.

I think it was the supporting cast of characters – the women in the village, the vicars daughter and particularly the incomer toffs that I found grated with me, and I will confess that I skimmed my way through the climax of the story, wanting to see the solution but not wanting to linger in the company of some of the protagonists. I know it was set in 1920s Fife but I really wanted to shake most of the women, including Dandy herself on a couple of occasions.

So mildly disappointing but not a total disaster which is just as well as I have two more in the series to read.