"What's at the back of the field?" I asked. "Beyond the stream? Where the railing is?" Dermot turned to follow my pointing finger, and smiled. "That," he said, "is your poison garden."
Corrbofinn. A place where things are... different. Where Jessica Quill has inherited a house and land. And where she has just become the number one suspect in the murder of local wide boy Tony Millar.
Jessica's life has entered uncharted waters. A job she hates, a cheating partner, her unexpected inheritance, and the final straw: tripping over a corpse in the rain when she comes to rural Ireland to arrange the sale of her property.
But Herne's Acre is no ordinary place. It's a key crossing-point on the borderlands between the mortal world and the otherworlds of the sidhe. And now it is to be sold by a stranger unfamiliar with the true nature of Corrbofinn, a source of considerable anxiety for Thornapple, that very civil servant of the Borderlands Commission.
Bewildered, grumpy, and armed only with knowledge of toxic plants and classic detective stories, Jessica pursues her own inquiries to clear her name. Corrbofinn yields some of its mysteries along with new friends-human, canine, and... Well. You know.
Increasingly conflicted, Jessica's sensible self squares off against her dreams of a different life. But she makes enemies, too, leading to a deadly showdown on Hallowe'en, when the borders between worlds are at their most fluid and uncanny.
Autorentext
R. S. Maxwell is the impenetrable mystery-writing pseudonym of independent author and scholar Susan Maxwell, who also writes literary/slipstream and fantasy fiction. She has published five novels and a collection of short stories, and her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies. She has worked as a professional archivist in Ireland, the UK, and the Netherlands, holds a PhD for her research on archives and the margins, and writes non-fiction on themes related to archives and literature. Maxwell is a regular juror for the British Fantasy Awards and reviewer for the BSFA Review and Inis, the magazine of Children's Books Ireland. Literary influences come mostly from speculative and modernist fiction.
When not writing, or painting, or being an archivist, the author can be found in the vegetable patch, listening to music, reading books, watching old detective series, or catching up on sleep.