The Alpine village of Kirchwald, with its onion-spired church and brightly frescoed buildings, was an ideal setting for a winter sports holiday. But Kate Paterson hadn’t come to the Austrian Tyrol to ski. It was here that the man she loved had been killed in a climbing accident and Kate, in her grief, simply wanted to see his burial place.
On her first visit to the mountain slopes, she was surprised and mildly flattered to find herself in the company of four attentive men. They had heard about the climbing accident. Stephen Marsh, who had known Matt Danby, thought that there was some mystery about his death; Phil Sloan, a helpful holidaymaker, agreed that Kate had a right to discover more. But Toni Hammerl, the ski instructor, disagreed. And Jon Becker, who lived in Innsbruck and obviously knew more than he was prepared to say, gave her a terse warning: `Don’t probe, it will do you no good.’
It soon became clear that the circumstances surrounding Matt’s death were sinister but for Kate, Becker’s warning came too late. Embroiled in a political situation she didn’t understand, she slowly became aware that she had loved a man she scarcely knew . . .
About the Author :
Hester Rowan was born and brought up in rural Northamptonshire, one of the fortunate means-tested generation whose further education was free. She went from her village school via high school to London University, where she read history.
She served for nine years as an education officer in the Women’s Royal Air Force, then worked variously as a teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil servant and in advertising. In the 1960s she opted out of conventional work and joined her partner in running a Norfolk village store and post office, where she began writing fiction in her spare time. Hester Rowan also wrote 10 crime novels as Sheila Radley.
