The Lazarus Tree - Robert Richardson

Author Gus Maltravers is asked by an old friend to visit him in the village of Medmelton. The friend is concerned about his teenage stepdaughter. Specifically that whatever's going on with her is somehow related to the unsolved murder of a notable poet in the village over a year earlier.

So Gus solves the murder in the course of figuring out what the girl is up to and who is putting her up to it. Richardson doesn't waste time having Gus ask questions, only to be rebuffed by the locals who are suspicious of outsiders. He establishes that's what the police encountered when originally investigating the murder, and restricts Gus to mostly interacting with a couple of villagers who are willing to help. Notably, people who either left the village for a lengthy spell before returning, or moved there after retirement. The ones who lived their whole lives there wouldn't talk if you put them through the Inquisition.

Which means there isn't much of Gus drawing the wrong conclusions. The two locals give him enough inside dope to make some educated guesses/shots in the dark that land. That, in turn, provides enough for him to make his way to the next deduction. Richardson plays with the notion that several of the locals are hiding various secrets, and the way gossip is quickly blown out of proportion frightens them, but those are things we're aware of, not Gus. There's also never a point where Gus comes under attack by shadowy figures trying to drive him away. Richardson adds a hint of something supernatural at one point, but never really does anything further with it.

It's not a dull book; Richardson keeps the plot moving. He cuts to scenes with other characters that show glimpses into their lives that are mostly depressing, but might convince you they'd have motive. But there's not much suspense when your main character is never in any danger, and seems more concerned at the start with what a teenager is up to after hours than who killed a guy Gus, by his own admission, didn't like (the poet was an arrogant, underaged skirt-chasing drunk, so no great loss to the gene pool.)

'Maltravers noted the preferred adjective. Not tragic, not wicked, not mysterious, but embarrassing, as though Patrick Gabriel had committed a faux pas by inconsiderately being murdered in the village and giving Medmelton a bad name.'