Book One · Out Now
The Blueprint Murder
When Margot Finch arrives in Cresthollow Bay to settle her late aunt’s estate, she expects three weeks of paperwork and rain. She does not expect a body in the archive — and she certainly does not expect to recognise the staging of the crime scene from a half-forgotten regional mystery novel published in 1971.
Someone in this town has read Such a Quiet Town. And they have decided to use it.
As Margot pulls at the threads — a borrowing log, an obscure pen name, an archive with too many stories of its own — she begins to understand that the killer is not improvising. They are following a chapter outline. And there is a chapter coming up that she would very much like not to be in.
A locked-tight cosy mystery in the British tradition: warm, witty, and dark without being grim, with a protagonist who solves cases through stubbornness and lateral thinking, a cast you’ll want to spend a long weekend with, and clues visible on the first read that are more satisfying on the second.
What to expect
- A coastal-town setting with the kind of texture that makes you want to walk the high street.
- A protagonist who solves cases through stubbornness and lateral thinking, not procedure.
- Murders at the edges of the frame — no gratuitous violence.
- Killers undone by their own established flaws, not last-minute reveals.
- Clues visible on the first read. More satisfying on the second.
- A herring gull called Gerald.