"Berlie Doherty gave me a copy of her new novel A BEAUTIFUL PLACE FOR A MURDER (Five Leaves) when I went to her cottage for lunch in early June. It's a thriller set around her home in Edale and one of the best things about it is the way it brings the landscape to life. You know exactly what everything looks like in a novel by Berlie and she understands the countryside very well. The story is a thriller for young adults with a plot which is exciting enough to keep you turning the pages and yet quite believable. There's only a certain kind of crime you can envisage taking place in this setting and with these characters and Berlie has got the tone just right."  Adele Geras

Nelie Kirkham, Unrest of their time. Cresset Press 1966

Ruth

There is a land within a northern clime

Where many a mountain reaches to the clouds,

That rest their billowy fleeces on its head,

And roll adown its rugged, storm-rent sides.

At foot of such a mountain in this land

There lies a pool, dark and mysterious,

Shadowed by blackended rocks, and sedges drear,

In which not reedy warbler builds its nests;

No heather nods its bells unmusical

Around its banks, no sombre-coated bee

Hums over it a busy melody;

No speckled trout or dark-backed umber there

Wake the still waters with their circling leaps;

No chattering grouse drops in the doubtful wave

Feathers that float like tiny argosies;

Nor furry-footed coney stops to drink

Its waters salt as those their watch that keep

Over the doomed towns of Palestine

With solemn awe the lonely shepherd treads

Past the weird margin of the mountain tarn,

Fearing the sprite that dwells within its depths,

And rot, and ague, and a thousand ills

He thinks such fearsome folks are wont to give

To those that trespass on their sovereignty

But one there was a sprightly lad and tall,

And gifted with a face in which for mastery

Action and thought seemed always combating,

Who always felt attracted to the pool,

And sat for many hours plumbing its depth

With anxious eyes; but nought saw he therein

Save the reflection of his comely face.

Warning he had full oft from wiser men

To meddle not in such a dangerous quest,

Nor seek for death with death was surely found:

For 'tis believed that on a certain eve

When summer fruits are ripe, and in the sky

The stars can scarcely light their shining lamps,

And the soft air is strangely musical

With the faint hum of fairy merriment,

A maiden, strangely fair, but strangely formed,

Rises from out the pool, and by her songs

And heavenly beauty lures to shameful death

The luckless wight who hears her melodies.

But youth is curious, and the shepherd lad

Longed with intense desire to see the maid. 

He dreamt of her by night, her white arm seemed

To lock him in a clinging, fond embrace;

She haunted him by day as moodily

He watched beside the pool, and seemed to see

In each reflected cloud her drapery. 

At last the night arrived, the sun just dipped

His rosy fingers in the pathless sea,

Leaving the world not dark, but hardly light;

The waning stars scarce marked the azure sky,

And zephyrs gently cooled the heated earth:

'Twas just the hour when night and morning meet

When, watching still, the boy sat eagerly,

On a huge stone that darkened all the pool;

When suddenly the wave gleamed fitfully

With sudden light, as in the tropic seas

The lambent waves shine with phosphoric glare,

And brighter grew the water, and the air

Was filled with music ravishingly sweet. 

The youth stood gazing at these mysteries,

And saw from out the troubled waves arise

A maiden, clothed alone in loveliness;

Her golden hair fell o'er her shoulders white,

And curled in amorous ringlets round her breasts;

Her eyes were melting into love, her lips

Had made the very roses envious;

Withal a voice so full, and yet so clear,

So tender, made for loving dialogues.

And then she sang - sang of undying love

That waited them within her coral groves

Beneath the deep blue sea, and all the bliss

That mortals made immortal could enjoy,

Who lived with her in sweet community.

She sang, and stretching out her rounded arms,

She bade him leap and take her for his own -

With one wild cry he leapt, and with a splash

That roused the timid moorhen from her nest,

Sank 'neath the darkling wave for evermore

"old ghosts that haunt eternal nights"

It's quite a mixed bag, I liked that one and the one about Solomon's Temple, others I didn't care for much but it's well worth a look.

Ruth

Here food is granted its important place -

limestone bacon, poached iron oxide eggs,

shrugged quivering from cool calcite pots.

Cauliflower rears albino, monstrous;

wedding cake brims bright with mica bits.

We place our shy hands on a phallic stump

of rock, start a raucous giggling fit

which spasms on, swelling to a peak

at this, the smirking horror of a hard

cold breast, its single leaking eye.

Halfway through, we crowd around our guide

to hear the tale of who dared break the flitch -

knowing as we do the unfair truth

that touching things we shouldn't touch will always

be the act remembered longest, best;

looking back on dreamlike, half-lit worlds,

where Hobbits roam and angry Pixies lurk,

Dame Washpot pours down her endless whirlpool,

flicks us with her chilling drips; until

at last, the thing we dreaded most thrills through us

as the lights go out.  Plunged in deepest

black we laugh at fear, reach out for hands,

recover. It's then we start to feel the cold,

understand how long this journey's been,

all the time emerging into the light,

footsteps quietening, already vanishing.

Set in the winter of 1963, 13 year old Alison Carter vanishes from her home in the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scarsdale. The effect of her disappearance reverberates down the years in this incredible tale of deception and illusion.

Although the village of Scarsdale is fictitious there are a number of elements which suggest its proximity to Buxton and the Earl Sterndale area of the White Peak.