Broken Music

Eccles’s middling stand-alone set in England in 1919 features Herbert Reardon, a recently discharged soldier with a disfiguring war wound who can’t let go of a puzzling death that occurred in August 1914, which was the last case he handled as a police sergeant in the small town of Broughton Underhill before joining the army. Marianne Wentworth, the grown daughter of the Rev. Francis Wentworth, drowned in a lake after a boathouse jetty collapsed, a tragedy widely viewed as accidental. The surviving Wentworths don’t welcome Reardon’s renewed inquiries, which only reinforce his suspicions of foul play. Meanwhile, he must adjust to the effect his scarred face has on others. The big family secret at the heart of the mystery is a bit hackneyed, and Eccles (The Shape of Sand) is less adept than Charles Todd in depicting the psychological aftermath of WWI. (Dec.)