Brown Bread And Butter?

I think I really enjoyed this book only not as much as I thought I would. I loved the beginning and the middle but near the end I literally had to speed read to the finish line. Haunted Ground had lovely writing and great depth but I was simply ready to finish it. The premise of Haunted Ground is this…an Irish farmer is digging up turf. Turf is what fuels stoves and fires for cooking and for the winter. Every farmer has his own turf patch and the cutting is exhausting and precise. As this farmer is digging he discovers a red headed woman, who has been buried in the peat for God only knows how long. It could be months, years, or centuries. The discovery gets everyone excited because there is an unsolved missing persons case going on within the area and everyone rushes to this area hoping wondering and praying that it is the missing person that they want it to be. There are three key characters in this novel that I am sure will reappear in the second novel in this series. Cormac and Nora are the archaeologists working on the buried body. Detective Garret Devaney is the relentless policeman who is determined to solve the crime. There are lots of towers and Irish bars and old estates and things to constantly dig up. There is a huge cast of odd quirky and dysfunctional characters that includes neighbors and cousins and parents and scientists and friends and unwed mothers with so many secrets that I should have kept a list of them…I don’t think any of these characters thought that just plain talking to someone about something that was bothering them would be a simple and effective way to find out what was going on…and truly everyone in this novel has a secret or two…or three…but it was a very good book…sort of in the Elizabeth George style of writing. Upon finishing it I only craved tea and brown bread with butter and perhaps a cheese sandwich or two and a green apple…these seemed to be the only foods that Nora and Cormac ever ate. I have no clue why books make me crave certain foods mentioned in them but they really do. We were at a Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning and of course our first item purchased was a hearty loaf of organic brown bread. Yum!!!