As I’ve read books five and six of Kate Hardy’s Georgina Drake Mysteries and quite enjoyed them, I decided to go back to the beginning and read the first in the series, The Body at Rookery Barn, to see how Georgina ended up in Norwich with a penchant for finding dead bodies. It introduces our intrepid widowed photographer and her friends and family, as well as getting the ball rolling with love interest, Inspector Colin Bradshaw.

When Georgina’s husband Stephen died, she found it difficult to stay in the house in which they’d lived and raised two children together. A year after his death, she decided to make a fresh start and moved to a rural farmhouse in Little Wenborough, Norfolk complete with a renovated barn turned guest house that she now rents out. Coming out of her grief and depression following Stephen’s death, she’s started to make friends in the community including Cesca who runs a local farm shop (and makes delicious desserts) and her mother-in-law, Sybbie.

One evening as Georgina is about to enter the barn to clean after her most recent visitor, a voice stops her from opening the door and tells her to call the police and an ambulance. There’s no one in sight, so a confused Georgina opens the door and is assaulted by the smell of vomit and death. Her visitor, Dr. Roland Garnett, a Classics lecturer at Cambridge who’d been renting her guest acommodation for the past three weeks and who was supposed to have left that morning, is dead. The mysterious voice again gives her instructions, and while Georgina is waiting for the police, the voice explains who she is – Doris, a young, very dead woman. Doris is a ghost, able to communicate with Georgina through her hearing aids. While at first Georgina thinks it’s some kind of trick, and questions her sanity, it becomes clear as they converse that Doris is really there, in spirit. Doris doesn’t know why she can speak with Georgina – she’s been in the house since she died there and has never been able to communicate with anyone before.

Doris died from falling down stairs on 14^th February 1971 which is, coincidentally, Georgina’s birth date. And while Georgina had lived in the house for over a year, this is the first time she’s heard Doris’s voice. Doris’s theory is that she’s still hanging around as a ghost because there is something she’s supposed to do before she can be at rest. She has no idea what that might be, but for now, she can communicate with Georgina and that’s enough. Georgina wisely keeps Doris’s presence to herself.

Meanwhile, Dr. Garnett’s death is treated as suspicious. The police soon find that many people had a motive to kill him, as he’d garnered a lot of dislike in the three weeks he’d been staying in Little Wenborough, from young Tom the gardener, to Cesca the cook, to Jodie the house cleaner, and so on. Even Georgina is considered a suspect. When she meets Inspector Bradshaw, they rub each other the wrong way at first though Colin is just being thorough – he has to assume everyone who would have access to the cottage is a suspect until he can eliminate them.

As the case investigating Dr. Garnett’s death progresses, Doris also remembers more about what proceeded her fall, and that it may not have been accidental. With two murders to solve, Georgina has her hands full. But as she gets closer to figuring out who might have killed Dr. Garnett, her own life is suddenly in danger. She’ll have to work closely with Colin to find out the truth before it’s too late.

Ah, it was nice to get some backstory for how Doris entered Georgina’s life, though I will say that reading the later books in the series without reading this one worked perfectly well as there’s enough explanation for Doris’s presence. There is clearly an overarching story arc (Georgina and Colin’s relationship, Doris’s own death) that continues from one novel to the next even while the deaths in each story are new murders to solve, and each story after book one contains a present day murder and a past murder that Doris is able to help solve.

As cosy mysteries go, I enjoyed the path that this one takes to its eventual conclusion. There are enough red herrings and possible motives to go around that it’s not easy to figure out who the murderer is, and I also really liked getting to know Doris’s backstory. The setting and characters of this series are very appealing, and I’ve already got book two lined up to read next!