Book description
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 . . . 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.
