Murder in the Rough

Sarah Deane Mystery #11

by J.S. Borthwick

During an especially cold, rainy May, three families move to the recently opened Ocean Tide community on the coast of Maine. Not long after their arrival, a decaying corpse is found lying in the rough of their beautifully manicured golf course-disrupting the idyllic community.

When a second body is discovered in a fertilizer shed, just yards away from the seventeenth green, the local authorities are puzzled over the sudden rash of dead bodies and their link to Ocean Tide's newest arrivals.

Despite her own misgivings and her husband Alex's warnings, Sarah Deane, an English professor and sometime amateur sleuth, becomes entangled in the investigation. What she uncovers promises to rock the very foundation of the Ocean Tide community.

J. S. Borthwick keeps us guessing with another sharp and literate Sarah Deane mystery.

Genres: Mystery

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

J. S. Borthwick is the pseudonym of Jean Scott Creighton. She lives on the Maine coast. She is the creator of 'Sarah Deane', a professor of English and amateur sleuth.

Series:
* Sarah Deane Mystery

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the eleventh in the Sarah Deane series. She has evolved over the series from a student to an assistant college professor. Since it is June and school is over, Sarah is looking forward to helping her husband’s parents settling into their new home in Maine. Having retired, her mother-in-law and father-in-law have moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to a private community Ocean Tide in Rockport Maine to be closer to their physician son Alex McKenzie and Sarah. Two other families have also moved into this community at the same time. Besides a lovely ocean view, the community boasts a golf course, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, swimming pools, bike and hiking trails, a lodge for guests, everything conveniently accessible for the home owners including assisted living facilities as members age. Not listed in the company’s brochure are murders to enliven the landscape. The first is an eighteen year old boy, the son of one of the newly arrived families and the nephew of the other. The bodies mount up as Sarah finds the second one, and her father-in-law finds the third. Sarah evidently has a knack for becoming involved in crime as the number of books in the series indicates. However she is not as much an amateur detective as someone who can’t resist getting involved in what is happening. The cast of supporting characters are given time and space to react to the murders, including the chief detective and his assistant, as well as the owner of the community and his two assistants. One of the interesting aspects of the story is the difference between those new to the state and those native to it. The family that has lost a son and a father through the murders also has two adolescent sons who need to be tutored to improve their grades. Sarah is hired to tutor them and their two cousins. This involves Sarah from another angle since one of the boys has clearly seen something that has disturbed him greatly. Trying to help the boy, who clearly wants to avoid her, leads to several dangerous situations for them both. Complicating matters bicycles are being stolen. This seems an ongoing crime in the fenced community and the adjourning towns. All is eventually resolved not so much from detection as from a hunch Sarah gets. Intuition is not to be dismissed, but the focus seems to be more on the characters’ reactions to the crime, than the crimes themselves

[Jennifer Robb · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent mystery but I found the narrative uninspiring and not very compelling to keep reading. I never really connected with any character and found myself worrying about what would happen to him/her.

I have not read previous books in this series. I'm not sure if that is an issue or not. There were many questions I had that didn't seem to be answered in this book, and I'm not sure if they'd been addressed in previous books. For example, I never quite understood why Sarah Deane hasn't adopted her husband's name and it wasn't discussed at all in this book. Certainly it is within her rights to keep her own name, but you'd think someone would remark on the fact that her husband is a McKenzie and she's a Deane?

For some reason (not explained in this book), John and Elspeth McKenzie decide to move to Ocean Tides. I'm sure part of it is being near their son and daughter-in-law, but John doesn't seem too thrilled about it and Elspeth ends up taking off for France (again, for reasons not fully explained but having something to do with her art) though her stay in France seems to be a couple days at most.

Ocean Tide seems to be the height of "spin"--trying to be something for everyone and trying to hide the unpleasantries of life.

I'm not sure I had any suspects for the murders, but I don't know if that was just that I didn't care enough to try to figure it out or if the plot was that bad at giving clues or so good that there were lots of red herrings.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The amateur detective trope and Sarah’s girlish innocence tire in this longer than necessary effort. Maybe my last Borthwick.

[Anne Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly good mystery novel. The book kept you guessing throughout, and there were a few days where I didn't want to put the book down. I was a little upset at the outcome, which was kind of predictable, but overall it was good.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Deane 11

[Shugga · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of short stories. Mysteries involving golf, actually, some good some not so much!