Christopher thinks he has his life under control until the mysterious Amaryllis arrives in the little town, spreading chaos and confusion in her wake.
Suddenly he isn’t sure about anything any more. Will he learn to relax and go with the flow or will he try desperately to remain in charge even in the face of domestic upsets and strange things happening all around him?
Crime in the Community had me chuckling right from the very beginning. It is set in the quiet Scottish village of Pitkirtly. Christopher is the chairman of the PLIF (Pitkirtly Local Improvement Forum) whose members tend to do nothing more strenuous than partake of a few drinks and nibbles at their monthly meeting in the local pub, the Queen of Scots. Suddenly, Christopher’s whole life is disrupted by the arrival at a PLIF meeting of Amaryllis, and then the appearance (and disappearance) of a man from the council. Amaryllis has plans to renovate the village hall, Christopher’s sister has a breakdown, an unknown American puts a fish and chip supper through Christopher’s letter box, there’s a shooting incident near the harbour – there are a lot of strange incidents that don’t seem to be connected at first, but may turn out to be relevant later!
I thoroughly enjoyed Crime in the Community even though some of the happenings seemed a little odd. It all made sense in the end. I loved the mix of characters, from Young Dave and Big Dave (not the two Daves, they don’t like it) to Jock and Mrs Stevenson. Although some of the sentences were rather long, they did make sense, and I think they added to the humour being that way.
Crime in the Community is the first in a series by Cecilia Peartree about Pitkirtly involving the same cast of quirky characters.
