As someone who loves puzzles and word games of all kinds, I was captivated by Martine Bailey’s latest novel, The Almanack. Each chapter opens with a riddle, the answers to which are listed at the end of the book but are also carefully hidden somewhere within the relevant chapter. If, for example, the solution to a riddle is ‘cherry’, in the pages that follow you will see a character eating cherries. Sometimes the allusion is so brief you could easily miss it but in other cases it will form the theme for the whole chapter.

The story itself is a murder mystery set in Georgian England. It begins in 1752 with Tabitha Hart’s reluctant return from London to the village of Netherlea in Cheshire in answer to an urgent summons from her mother. Unfortunately she arrives too late; her mother has died under suspicious circumstances, the only clues to her fate being some cryptic notes scribbled in the margins of her almanack, in which she describes her terror of someone referred to only as ‘D’.

As Tabitha sets out to identify the mysterious D, she comes up against the hostility of the other villagers, who disapprove of the life she has been leading in London. However, she receives help in her search from an unlikely source: a troubled young writer called Nat Starling, a newcomer to Netherlea who may be hiding secrets of his own.

This is the first book I’ve read by Martine Bailey and I was very impressed by her recreation of 18th century village life. With her descriptions of ancient superstitions and beliefs, a community ruled by the seasons and the weather, and the conflict between the old ways of life and the new, I was often reminded of Thomas Hardy. The reluctance of the villagers to move forward and embrace change is illustrated particularly well when they discover that Britain is to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, jumping forward by eleven days in September. They are confused and angry about the ‘stolen days’, with some of them believing their lifespan has somehow been shortened.

Time and calendars are important themes in this novel. First, there is the almanack in the story, which Tabitha’s mother had been using to plan her days and which holds some of the keys to the mystery. Then there’s the way in which the book itself is structured like an almanack, with each chapter headed by the date, some astrological information and a prophecy relating to something that will happen that day. Riddles, prophecies and predictions are woven throughout the text of the novel too, with the unknown villain using them to taunt and tease Tabitha and Nat.

I really enjoyed this book and its many layers. There were times, though, when all of the extra little features started to distract me from the story; I became too caught up in looking for clues to the riddles and for prophecies coming true and found myself losing track of the central mystery. Still, this was an unusual and entertaining read and I will now have to try Martine Bailey’s other two books, An Appetite for Violets and The Penny Heart, both of which sound intriguing too.

Thanks to Black Thorn for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.