What Abigail Did That Summer

What it’s about

While Peter is away, Abigail investigates missing teenagers around Hampstead Heath with a new friend and a highly opinionated network of talking foxes.

With Peter away, Abigail pursues questions around missing teenagers near Hampstead Heath. A friendship and a talkative network of foxes complicate what she can learn and whom she should trust. Abigail is the point-of-view character, bringing a younger intelligence and a very different degree of official authority to a series usually told through Peter's police work. The Heath is not just open space around the mystery: paths, boundaries and local inhabitants shape how she gathers information. The tone can be playful, but the opening concern remains the safety of young people. This is a companion story running beside an earlier main-series period, not a substitute for the novel Peter occupies at the same time.

Why it works

Abigail’s intelligence, confidence and blind spots make her a compelling lead rather than a junior substitute for Peter. The Hampstead setting supports a more youthful and folkloric mystery, while the foxes supply humour without making the danger feel trivial. The parallel timing with Foxglove Summer adds context but the story has its own shape.

Abigail can be confident and inexperienced in the same moment, which makes her a more interesting lead than a smaller version of Peter. She notices things his professional routines might cause him to sort too quickly, while lacking the formal standing to demand answers. The foxes add comedy and a strange form of local intelligence, but they also raise questions about the reliability of a witness who has interests of their own. The mystery is stronger when Abigail has to weigh those accounts rather than simply collect amusing remarks.

Hampstead Heath gives the story room for a folkloric register that differs from a police interview in central London. Its paths can feel familiar to one person and hard to read to another; that uncertainty suits a young investigator learning what she can do alone. The parallel timing with Foxglove Summer rewards a continuing reader without requiring this novella to repeat Peter's case. Its younger viewpoint may not satisfy someone who wants the Folly's ordinary procedures on every page, and the foxes will not be to everyone's taste. For readers interested in what an emerging practitioner sees before authority catches up with curiosity, the change is the point.

How the audiobook sounds

Marks gives Abigail a younger, quicker perspective and makes the change of narrator appropriate to the change of protagonist. Her performance is most effective when Abigail’s outward assurance and underlying vulnerability occupy the same scene. The result should be judged as Abigail’s audiobook, not as an attempt to reproduce Peter’s narration.

Marks gives Abigail a distinct first-person centre rather than trying to make her sound like Peter. The quicker energy suits a teenager who wants to act and thinks hard about how others perceive her. It is useful that the performance can leave a little uncertainty behind confidence; a listener hears a person testing her judgement, not a junior detective who already knows the rules.

The foxes create an opportunity for vocal variety, but their contribution works best when the scene still belongs to Abigail's enquiry. A commute can cover an encounter on the Heath; a longer session makes her changing view of a new friendship and the local information easier to follow. Listeners who rely on the main narrator for continuity should expect a genuine change of voice. That choice matches the story's separate viewpoint and makes the audiobook a companion with its own rhythm.

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