The House of Green Turf

A celebrated singer wakes in a hospital bed after a car accident carrying something far more troubling than her injuries: a deep, sourceless conviction that she once caused someone's death. She can't name it, can't place it, can't shake it. Rather than seek a psychiatrist, she hires an investigator to hunt down the truth — and what begins as a search for a grave quietly becomes something much more consuming, drawing in figures from her past and setting a chain of consequences in motion that no one anticipated. Ellis Peters understands that guilt doesn't require a clear memory to be devastating, and that premise alone gives this slim novel an unusual emotional weight.

What distinguishes this entry in the Felse series is how Peters handles the investigation as a kind of inward journey rather than a procedural puzzle. The prose is measured and precise without ever feeling cold, and Peters has a gift for landscape — the European settings feel genuinely atmospheric rather than decorative. At under two hundred pages, the book never overstays its welcome, yet it leaves a quiet resonance that lingers well beyond its final pages.