The Hemlock Reel

A Cotswold Village Mystery of Secrets and Silence

The Hemlock Reel
A Cotswold Village Mystery of Secrets and Silence

In a quiet Cotswold village, nothing ever truly disappears.

Florence Lively, organiser of the monthly village cinema night, expects nothing more than a pleasant evening of flickering nostalgia when she discovers an old silent film reel hidden in the parish hall attic. But when the reel is shown, it reveals something far more unsettling than forgotten entertainment, a shadowed figure planting something in the village green decades ago.

At first, it is dismissed as a curiosity. Until a visiting gardening expert collapses during the intermission.

As the village closes ranks with its usual politeness and quiet reassurances, Florence begins to notice what others overlook. A detail in the film. A pattern in the allotments. A history carefully tended and deliberately concealed.

The deeper she looks, the clearer it becomes that this is no ordinary mystery. The truth has been buried for years, rooted in the soil of the village itself and someone is willing to do anything to keep it there.

With nothing more than her sharp eye for detail and a growing sense of unease, Florence must untangle a story that stretches from past to present, where every clue is hidden in plain sight and every neighbour may be keeping something back.

Because in this village, secrets are not forgotten.

They are planted.