Flight of a Witch

This first American publication of a novel, written in 1964, in the series featuring modern police sleuth George Felse proves that Peters, best known for her Brother Cadfael mysteries set in medieval Shrewsbury, was as much a top-notch mystery writer almost 30 years ago as she is today. Only the heavy-handed description in the early pages, of the frustrated love that young schoolmaster Tom Kenyon harbors for the beautiful, remote Welsh teenager Annet Beck, betrays the author's lack of experience. But as soon the girl disappears while strolling on mysterious Hallowmount, a hill said to be the abode of witches over the centuries, and returns five days later unable to account for the time that has passed, Peters holds the reader in thrall. Annet's inscrutability is delicately contrasted with the love that every man in her village has felt for her at one time or another, and the Welsh landscape provides a shadowy atmosphere that informs the novel on every level. Felse, in a class with the best-portrayed British policemen in fiction today, is a fully-dimensioned character who plumbs the experiences of his personal life to understand his case. This is a deeply satisfying murder novel in which the central challenge lies in unraveling the mystery of a young woman's character. (May)