The Cresthollow Bay Mysteries

Welcome to Cresthollow Bay: a coastal town with a long memory, a public library that doubles as the moral centre of the universe, and a former arts journalist who keeps finding herself at the centre of murders she didn’t ask to solve.

Margot Finch was supposed to be sorting out her late aunt’s cottage. She was not supposed to notice the staging at a crime scene, or to start asking the kind of questions that people prefer not to be asked. She is, by her own insistent admission, not a detective. The trouble is that she is very good at it anyway.

The Cresthollow Bay Mysteries are warm, witty, and dark without being grim — the kind of beach reads where the comedy lands, the victims feel like real people, and the killers are undone by their own established flaws rather than by sudden revelations on the final page. Every clue is visible on the first read. Every clue is more satisfying on the second.

If you like your cosies with sharper teeth, your coastal villages with longer memories, and your protagonists with a journalist’s eye and a dry sense of self-preservation — pull up a chair at the Anchor. There’s a gull called Gerald. There’s a constable who will absolutely not call this a partnership.

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.
• Victims who feel like real, complicated people — no saints.
• Killers undone by their own established flaws, not last-minute reveals.
• Clues visible on the first read. More satisfying on the second.
• A recurring cast you’ll want to spend time with — including a herring gull called Gerald.
• Each book is a self-contained mystery. The town and its people deepen with every case.