Pagan gods don’t walk away just because you stop looking at them. The Gronny Patch sleeps. Perhaps it dreams. Or perhaps not . . .
Georgian Lichfield society is enthralled by the arrival of dashing ex-officer Orville; he charms his way into the salons, grand houses and even a great inheritance from extrovert Sir Morton – very unexpectedly.
After making himself unpopular and bankrupt, he ends up dead under mysterious circumstances in the Gronny Patch, an eerie parcel of land on his estate that is associated in local legend with the Green Man.
A hundred years later (in the 1920s), detective writer Julia Warren returns to her home in Lichfield to write her next novel. Initially she hopes to find material from the past and set it in the present. Aunt Isobel, in the middle of making preparations for the annual midsummer ball, has managed to root out an old journal from 1780, which might prove a source of inspiration. Once Julia starts reading her ancestor’s journal she becomes absorbed in solving the mystery surrounding officer Orville and Gronny Patch. Detective fever takes her over, and she moves from reality to legend as the Green Man stalks her dreams; events from the past seem set to re-enact themselves in the present, and she finds herself unravelling more than one mystery.
Complete at approx. 83,000 words