The Tale of Briar Bank by Susan Wittig Albert

Beatrix Potter is a well-known and loved children's author and illustrator. With the money from her books, she has purchased a farm in Lake Country and uses it as an escape from her demanding mother and father. Her mother, thinking Beatrix is being an undutiful daughter, has demanded her daughter stay with her until after the holidays. But Beatrix, who usually caves to her mother's demands, doesn't cave this time, and she leaves for her property, Hill Top farm, along with two guinea pigs as a present for a girl Beatrix knows named Caroline Longford, named Nutmeg and Thackeray.

Nutmeg cannot wait to meet Caroline, but Thackeray hates Nutmeg and the journey out of the city. He'd much rather be reading edifying works and not listening to the female chatter from Nutmeg. He's so peeved that he bites several people who try to stroke him, not likng that sort of thing.

When Beatrice gets to Hill Top Farm, though, she finds that most of the Lake Country is buried under a thick fall of snow, with more on the way. This means she won't be able to return to her parents' house in time for the party she'd been helping her mother plan, but she doesn't feel upset about this, rather, she is overjoyed by the idea of having to stay on her farm a few extra days.

The latest news from around the town is that Lady Longford;s barn mysteriously burned to the ground after being struck by something large and flaming, and Mr. Wickstead, a noted antiquarian, has died in the forest. The top part of a tree fell on him. There were animal marks on the tree, but far too large to be any sort of animal native to the area. He is survived by a sister who had recently found him, from Manchester. Apparently, their parents had died, and as orphans, the family was split up. Now, so soon after finding him, they are cruelly separated once more by death. Beatrix doesn't attend the inquest, where Wickstead's death is attributed to misadventure and natural causes. i.e. struck by a tree. But she is invited to a memorial supper for the man, along with most of the town.

It seems that Wickstead had recently found in the woods an ancient treasure from the early days of Britain, and the amount of treasure was greatly exaggerated by the wagging tongues of the town gossips. After his death, the treasure went missing, and no one is sure exactly what happened to it.

Meanwhile, in the woods, Bosworth Badger, owner of a Badger Hole and Hostelry called the Brockery, is visited by Bailey,another badger from another hole. Actually, he was rescued by Bosworth's nephew, Thorn, who fished him out of a frozen lake, and Bailey has quite a tale to tell of his burnt paw, and how he ended up in the lake. It seems that he discovered a dragon living in his den. The dragon, named Thorvaald, was guarding the treasure that Wickstead found, guarding it for a much larger female dragon named Yllva. Bailey had somehow awakened the dragon, and become fast friends with it. But when they heard about the discovered treasure, Thorvaald found that it was the treasure *he* had been guarding which had been stolen.

Desperate to find it, he kept watch on the hole where it had been placed, and found Wickstead putting it back in the holw, But in his interest to see what was going on, he perched in the tree, which broke, fell and killed Mr. Wickstead. Yllva had also heard the tales and went in search of the treasure, and thought the package on Bailey's back, which contained his snowshoes, was the treasure and he was stealing it. She attacked him, burning his paw and forcing him to dive into the lake, but then Thorvaald counter-attacked. He set Yllva on fire, but she crashed into the Longford's barn and did not escape the flames.

Now Thorvaald is missing, and the county has seen enough weird and amazing things to be extremely confused.

It's also confusing that Mr. Wickstead didn't know about any siblings, but his sister showed up shortly after he found the treasure. And when Beatrix discovers that the pictures that Mr. Wickstead's sister had been showing him are of her own family home, she smells a rat. But can the "sister" explain her presence in the home of a man she is not actually related to?

This book was a short read, but amusing. The way the author and the story treats animals as real people puts me in mind of Rita Mae Brown and her "Mrs. Murphy" books. But the exception here is that Mrs. Murphy tends to think as a human would. The animals here are less concerned with humans, and only to the point that they can kill or endanger the animals. Like the Mrs. Murphy books, though, the animals tend to be friendly with each other, even the dogs and cats. And, in this case, the animals end up knowing more about the solution of how Mr. Wickstead died than the humans do.

All in all, a fun tale, and while the story has Beatrix Potter at its center and involves a historical period of time, the book reads very much like a cozy, even amongst the animals. This series is the most fun and amusing read I have ever had in the historical mystery genre, and I will definitely recommend it to others.