The Price of Dormice by Steve Lunn

The Night Counsellor by L K Pang Cemetery Lodge by Paula Hillman

The Price of Dormice by Steve Lunn

When Mick’s life is almost ended by Oxford’s influential chief planner Conrad, the near-miss and ensuing violence awaken his sense of justice.

Conrad, deeply embedded in Oxford’s elite, colludes with venerable St Mark’s College in their sale of a 650-acre farm for development.

Strategically located in the OxCam Growth Arc, the development will involve bulldozing a nature reserve and its dormice.

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Mick joins fellow ordinary people in protest. Meanwhile Conrad’s wife Kimberley demands a divorce and extends a helping hand to Mick.

Tragedy strikes when two people, believed to be Conrad and Kimberly, die in a suspected arson attack on their home.

Mick becomes prime suspect. Unable to prove his innocence, he realises truth hardly matters in this game of privileged versus powerless.

The privileged set the rules, forcing Mick and friends to resort to blackmail and guerrilla tactics.

Amidst murders, romance blooms, yet the fate of the dormice hangs in the balance.

My Review

Another book set in a part of the country I know pretty well. I live in Cheltenham, which is mentioned a couple of times in the story. We often visit Oxford, taking the granddaughters to the ‘Nat Hist’ as our accidental hero Mick Jarvis calls it, and the Pitt Rivers with its shrunken heads.

But The Price of Dormice isn’t about the past. It’s about the future, and the price we pay for allowing green belt land to be turned into a massive housing development. The natural world is shrinking thanks to us, and a group of unscrupulous developers are going to make loads of money from it. And I mean LOADS.

So what has this got to do with dormice, I hear you ask? The story centres around the compulsory purchase of Glebe Farm, which has been farmed by Tom and Linda for years, and there just happens to be a nature reserve nearby with its colonies of dormice, about six or seven of the furry little creatures in total. If the purchase goes through and the development is approved, the farm will be flattened and the dormice…..you’ll have to use your imagination.

Naomi and Andrea are not having it. They both feel passionately about stopping this travesty, while Mick has his own agenda, as does Gail. Mick has fallen out, shall we say, with nasty Conrad over his wife Kimberly (I won’t try and explain), while Gail believes Conrad hastened the death of her mother by causing her injury in an accident that was his fault. Together with Tom and Linda and dog Friday, they form a protest group to see if they can stop the development. Except they don’t really know who and what they are up against.

It’s exciting and very funny, extremely well-written, and has environmental issues and corruption at its heart. And you just have to love Mick and his gang of protesters. And of course Friday and Lovelump.

Many thanks to @ZooloosBT for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

Raised in a pit village in Derbyshire, Steve Lunn now lives in Oxford, where his debut novel, The Price of Dormice, is set. He worked on hill farms and in software design and education, and co-founded Southern England’s first community-owned wind farm.

Steve campaigns on environmental issues and actively engages in conservation and re-wilding. He shares his life with artist Imogen Rigden, their extended family, and a young dog.