Summers End

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 265
Series: Shady Hollow #5
Rating:

Synopsis:

A unique take on dark academia, featuring everyone’s favorite vulpine sleuth, Vera Vixen.

It’s late August in Shady Hollow, and the heat has intrepid reporter Vera Vixen eager to get away. She agrees to chaperone the annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture, along with her good friend Lenore Lee to come with her.

But when the two enter the tomb, they find bones that are distinctly more…modern. Digging a little deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in a recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues. Now the fox and raven have to delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to determine which creature thought they were clever enough to get away with the perfect murder.

Summers End is the latest in Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow series, and it takes the story out of the immediate environs of Shady Hollow, to a nearby archaeological site which has obvious analogues with sites like Stonehenge and Newgrange: it’s both a tomb and a calendar, surrounded by ritual and stories. Vera and Lenore are there to chaperone some kids to see the site and learn about it, and have a little bit of a holiday.

And of course there’s a murder, and of course Vera Vixen has to be in on it — not least because, predictably, someone important to her is involved (if only by proxy). We learn a little more about Lenore, and about her sister, who ends up accused of the murder. It’s a neat way of taking us out of Shady Hollow and ensuring that it doesn’t feel too much like the supposedly friendly little town is rife with crime (same with the previous book, which turned out to be a very different sort of crime).

I enjoyed the setting, though the dramatic denouement started pushing into being a little too much. I was surprised that we didn’t see more of Orville, but on reflection it’s actually quite nice to still see Vera operating separately — she’s an independent fox, and while she enjoys partnering up with Orville (inasfar as that’s appropriate given she’s a reporter, not part of the police), it’s nice to see her going solo. Or, as in this case, with her own sidekick.

If the other books in the series leave you cold, I doubt this’ll change things, but I found it a fun installment.

Rating: 4/5