‘Mystery at the Lantern Theatre’ by Clare Chase

Published by Bookouture,
12 October 2026. 
ISBN: 978-1-80722070-2 (PB)

Eve Mallow loves her life in Saxford St. Peter because it allows her to combine her profession as a journalist, who specialises in obituaries, with helping her best friend, Viv, by working at her cafe and trying to organise the chaos that Viv creates. Eve is a very controlled person but at the start of the story she is feeling very much out of her comfort zone because she and Viv have been persuaded to help out the local theatre group, the Saxford Players, when illness means they are short-handed and need volunteers to fill some minor roles. The pressure is high because they are currently on tour, performing Cinderella, at a nationwide competition. The performance is taking place at the Lantern Theatre and some of the actors are staying at the hotel, which is part of the same building. Soon things start to occur that override Eve’s stage fright with other concerns: peacock feathers appear in the scenery and in a good luck card, which causes consternation amongst the superstitious actors, also key props like one of Cinderella’s glass slippers and Prince Charming’s ornate belt go missing. 

The director of the Saxford Players is Cally Walcott, who has been a moderately successful actor, although she has never hit the big time. Under her guidance the Players are doing well, but not all of the actors are on good terms with her. Her assistant, Phoebe, is so suffocating in her obsessive determination to invade every aspect of Cally’s life that Cally has threatened to dismiss her. In contrast, Hayley, one of the Ugly Sisters, shows open hostility to Cally, which is unfortunate as Hayley is the goddaughter of Cally’s partner, Rex, and it is evident that Rex adores Cally. Also, Billy, who is playing Buttons, is an immensely talented actor who had been Cally’s protege but now appears to be on bad terms with her. Eve feels that there is also something off-balance with Cally’s attitude to the actor playing Prince Charming, which also effects the young man’s relationship with his girlfriend, who plays Cinderella. Even more worrying than the dysfunctional interactions amongst the Saxford Players is the hostility of the owner of the Lantern Theatre and hotel, who had been married to Cally’s late sister. 

Cally is murdered and, after the initial police investigation, the Players return to Saxford. Eve receives the commission to write Cally’s obituary, and takes on her self-appointed role as amateur detective, fervently hoping that the crime can be solved before her family comes down to stay for Christmas. Having a happy family celebration with her infant granddaughter is especially important to Eve because her second husband, Robin, has been offered a new job with the London police. Eve will not stand in Robin’s way if this is what he wants, but she loves Saxford and does not want to leave. She is also worried about Viv, who had been widowed when she was a young woman and has recently entered the dating market with catastrophic results. 

It seems to Eve that Viv is self-sabotaging her new relationships by choosing men who have no interest in a permanent relationship because she is afraid of being hurt as much as she was when her husband died. At the Lantern Theatre, Viv had encountered a pleasant, likeable man that she got on with well and Eve wants her to encourage him, but Viv is unwilling to put herself on the line. 

Despite the efforts of Eve and the friends who assist her investigations, further death and violence occurs and Eve is afraid that, unless she acts quickly, more innocent people will be harmed. 

Mystery at the Lantern Theatre is the seventeenth book in the series featuring Eve Mallow. It has a large cast of characters, many returning from previous books, others new to this novel. The plot is complex, with many twists and turns, and Eve is an engaging protagonist. This is an enjoyable addition to an entertaining, long-running series, which I recommend.
--------
Reviewer: Carol Westron

Clare Chase writes classic mysteries. Her aim is to take readers away from it all via some armchair sleuthing in atmospheric locations. Like her heroines, Clare is fascinated by people and what makes them tick. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked in settings as diverse as Littlehey Prison and the University of Cambridge, in her home city. She’s lived everywhere from the house of a lord to a slug-infested flat and finds the mid-terrace she currently occupies a good happy medium. As well as writing, Clare loves family time, art and architecture, cooking, and of course, reading other people’s books.

www.clarechase.com

Carol Westron is a Golden Age expert who has written many articles on the subject and given papers at several conferences. She is the author of several series: contemporary detective stories and police procedurals, comedy crime and Victorian Murder Mysteries. Her most recent publications are Paddling in the Dead Sea and Delivering Lazarus, books 2 and 3 of the Galmouth Mysteries, the series which began with The Fragility of Poppies. Her most recent books is The Apples of Sodom. 

www.carolwestron.com 

Bookshop.org

and Bookbanks launch third
Books That Give drive,
supported by Vick Hope

 

• Author & TV presenter Vick Hope encouraging readers to join the campaign
• Bookshop.org to donate 10% of all sales between
  22-25 October to the charity providing free books at food banks
• Helping the charity further expand in the
  North East of England
• Supporting Bookbanks’ mission to change lives through books & conversations, while every sale continues to benefit indie bookshops 

PRESS IMAGES HERE 

London, Monday 19^th October 2026.
In the National Year of Reading, Bookshop.org will be donating 10% of all book sales from 22-25 October to the charity Bookbanks, in its third Books That Give campaign, supported by ambassador Vick Hope. 

Bookbanks supporter Vick Hope – photo credit: Women’s Prize Trust

 This October, anyone who buys a book from Bookshop.org – the online retailer that supports independent bookshops – will help Bookbanks in their mission to provide free books at food banks across London, East Anglia and the North West, with plans to expand further to reach the North East, opening in Newcastle from Thursday 4 November, at the Newcastle Foodbank's Church of the Venerable Bede distribution centre. 

Since launching in 2024, Bookbanks has distributed over 25,000 books to people accessing food banks, as well as training 140 volunteers with a background in books to run the stalls, holding 21 author events inside food banks (with more scheduled quarterly). Each of the 11 locations to which it has now expanded also provides 200 hours of conversation time between food bank guests and trained volunteers annually. 

L-R: Bookbanks Dalston in action; a happy Bookbanks guest –
photo credits: Bookbanks 

In December 2025, the charity partnered with The Sunday Times for their ‘Get Britain Reading’ campaign, which significantly raised the profile and funds for the charity. In March of this year, Founding Director Emily Rhodes was also a finalist for the new Queen’s Reading Room National Reading Hero Medal, which was celebrated with a Royal Reception at Clarence House. 

Every £1,500 raised allows Bookbanks to set up in a new food bank, including recruiting and training a team of 10 local volunteers, as well as sourcing and delivering over 500 books. With the charity growing fast, Bookbanks aims to reach 30 food banks nationwide by 2030. 

Vick Hope, Author, TV presenter and Bookbanks supporter, said: “Books can inspire confidence, spark curiosity and help people dream big, whatever their own story. As someone who's incredibly proud to be from the North East, it's brilliant to see Bookbanks coming to the region, giving people using food banks access to free books. Everyone deserves the chance to fall in love with reading, and I know from my own experience just how life-changing that can be.” 

Emily Rhodes, Founding Director at Bookbanks, said: “To have this support from Bookshop.org for the third year running is a huge honour. The Books that Give drive has already made such a difference to the number of struggling families we are able to reach. In the next three years, we want to have established our free book stalls in 30 food banks across the UK and this new drive will make a real difference to our ability to expand, reaching more of the many communities who would benefit from the transformative power of books.” 

Nicole Vanderbilt, Managing Director of Bookshop.org UK, said: “Bookshop.org is proud to partner with Bookbanks once again this year, for our third Books That Give charity drive. This feels especially important in the National Year of Reading, the UK-wide campaign designed to inspire more people to read. When customers buy books from us, they can be sure their money contributes to good causes, and helps support independent bookshops all year round. As part of Books That Give, we’re proud to donate a further 10% from all our sales between 22-25 October to Bookbanks. We hope that through our fundraising efforts they will have the means to grow even further, expanding their activities in Newcastle, widening access to books to those who can’t afford them.” 

Find out more about ‘Books That Give’ here,

and follow the latest developments on social media.  

‘Better the Devil’ by J D Kirk

Published by Allison & Busby,
22 October 2026.
ISBN: 978-0-74903440-5 (HB)

DCI Jack Logan's newly promoted DI Hamza is in trouble: his first case is the throat-slit murder of a local drugs lord. A second murder is in Forres, just over the border into Aberdeen Police territory, which brings new Aberdeen DCI Nathan Reeves onto the scene. DCI Reeves is all set to start his own turf-war, enforced with a gleaming American smile, pump-handle handshake and perpetual cheerfulness. Luckily DCI Logan has Hamza's back - and troubles of his own, once he learns his old nemesis, Bosco Maximuke, has suddenly been released from jail. 

It's always a treat to pick up a new novel by a star writer, and Better the Devil was a super read. Logan's a great character, grumpy outside with a soft centre, and his team have all the richness of characters developed over a series, without referring too much to previous books - I had no difficulty getting up to speed with them. The plotting was spot-on, with chapters that skipped at key moments from person to person, keeping you reading to follow the different strands of the story. The police work included all the elements that make up an investigation: crime scene, forensics, interviews, computer work, follow-ups. The wise-cracks between the characters were laugh-out-loud funny, especially when Jack Logan meets the Aberdeen force's new Mr Sunshine, and the disparate plots were all cleverly pulled together in the final action sequence. 

A cracking-paced PP with great characters, and a vividly realised Highland setting. This is the 22nd DCI Jack Logan novel, a treat for his many fans, and a great read even if you've never tried J D Kirk before. If you like starting with no 1, the series starts with A Litter of Bones.
---------
Reviewer: Marsali Taylor 

JD Kirk is the pen name of multi-award-winning author, screenwriter, and writer of comics, Barry Hutchison. Born and raised in Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland, Barry/JD wanted to be a writer from the age of nine, when a kindly librarian wrote his name on the spine of a notebook in which he’d written a terrible short story, and put it on the shelf. Since then, he has written over 140 books for children as Barry Hutchison, and over 15 books for adults as Barry J. Hutchison and is now thoroughly enjoying murdering people as JD Kirk. Barry still lives in Fort William with his wife and two children. He has no idea what the JD stands for.  

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  

Click on the title to read a review of her recent book
Death in a Shetland Family

www.marsalitaylor.co.uk

‘The Murder Planner’ by L.C. Tyler

Published by Allison & Busby,
22 October 2026.
ISBN: 978-0-74903440-5 (HB)

Sable Knight (known to her family as Eileen) is the owner and Commissioning Editor at Day & Knight, a London publishing house which specialises in crime fiction. However, this apparently innocuous description does not tell all. Her former business partner, Joe, started a sideline in commissioning struggling writers to plot perfect murders ostensibly for other authors who needed help. This turned out to be more lucrative than most publishing deals. Joe has since decamped to Spain apparently to run a bar, but in truth he needed to get away. We are told that he is now dead. Sable has continued with these ‘special editorial services. 

Problems start for Sable when a lady called Mrs Smith asks her to produce a plan for the murder of a philandering husband who is the chairman of a bank (fictional, of course). Sable engages Inderjit Singh to investigate possibilities. Singh turns out to be Derek Thomas, an unpublishable author who has a keen interest in his own health. After much research on location, Derek produces three scenarios which are sent to Mrs Smith. Shortly afterwards Lord Flowerdew, who happens to be the philandering chairman of a bank, meets his maker in one of the scenarios proposed by Derek. Fact definitely meets fiction.

Matters hot up. Sable starts to receive blackmail notes. The first is from someone called Pete McGill with whom she soon becomes friendly. It is not clear who has sent the others. Sable then finds that her brother Keith, a detective superintendent, has been put in charge of the investigation. He is convinced it is murder and thinks he knows the perpetrator but cannot prove anything. The rest of his team seem content to call it an accident. It gets even worse for Sable when her brother has his suspicions that someone has provided the template for the murder. It doesn’t help that Mrs Smith has gone off piste and not followed the (fictional, of course) post-murder plan. 

This is a highly entertaining, amusing and well-plotted novel (you won’t be surprised to know that there is an interesting twist or two at the end). Every time Sable thinks she may be getting off the hook, something happens to prolong her troubles. It is impossible to do justice to the wealth of characters and themes in a review, but here are a few of them. Sable’s mother is a highlight. She supports Labour but reads the ‘Daily Mail’; she knew the Kray twins and had them round for tea once (‘Lovely lads they were. So polite to your great gran.’). She spends most of her time watching television and there are many references to contemporary presenters and shows such as Richard Osman in ‘Pointless’ and Sue Barker in ‘A Question of Sport’. Alexander Armstrong is also mentioned. She is a sharp old girl as is proved later in the novel (‘You could cut yourself on her if you’re not careful’ Sable says to her brother). Writers such as WB Yeats get a mention, and there are plenty of deserved digs at crime fiction and its protagonists. Events such as ‘CrimeFest’ are cited. Tyler has a cynical turn of phrase. When Mrs Smith suggests that Sable’s advice is expensive, the latter’s response is ‘An MA in creative writing would cost more and be less effective.’ At one point Sable says ‘There’s nothing more irritating than an illiterate blackmailer.’ Shortly afterwards McGill claims to be ‘more of a post-modern blackmailer,’ whatever that is. 

Enough. I could go on but I think you’ll have got the message by now and I don’t want to say more about the plot. If you like your fiction to be fun, literate and enjoyable, this is the book for you. Highly recommended.
----------
Reviewer: David Whittle 

L. C. Tyler was born in Southend, Essex, and educated at Southend High School for Boys, Jesus College Oxford and City University London. After university he joined the Civil Service and worked at the Department of the Environment in London and Hong Kong. He then moved to the British Council, where his postings included Malaysia, Thailand, Sudan and Denmark. Since returning to the UK, he has lived in Sussex and London and was Chief Executive of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for eleven years. He is now a full-time writer. His first novel, The Herring Seller's Apprentice, was published by Macmillan in 2007, followed by nine further books in the series featuring Ethelred Tressider and his agent Elsie Thirkettle. The first book in his historical series, A Cruel Necessity, was published by Constable and Robinson in November 2014. Since then, he has published nine further books in this series. His latest book a standalone is The Murder Planner, published 22 October 2026. 

http://www.lctyler.com/

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. 

‘Bonfire’ by Iona Hepburn

Published by Allison & Busby,

22, October 2026.
ISBN: 978-0-74903436-8 (HB)

The Lewes Bonfire is a landmark event each November 5^th. Six Bonfire Societies compete good-naturedly for an audience, each with its own traditions and costumes, and dozens of torchlit fancy-dress processions move through the town accompanied by marching bands and crowds of people. It's a huge event, with food stalls, charity collections and seventeen burning crosses to commemorate the seventeen Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake in Lewes during the reign of Bloody Mary. 

It's noisy, crowded and chaotic, but usually good-humoured and well-meaning – so when newly promoted DCI Holly Hennessy is presented with a barrel containing the half-burnt body of a young woman, it goes against the entire ethos of the occasion. 

For Holly it gets worse. The same evening, she comes face to face with her nemesis, Kyra Ford, now a prominent academic and presenter of television documentaries, and a witness to the crime. In their schooldays they began as best friends, but Holly blew their closeness apart with a betrayal that almost destroyed Kyra. Holly has regretted it ever since but has never had the opportunity to put things right. Until now. 

Holly is made SIO of the investigation into the young woman's death and soon finds herself embroiled in the murky and secretive world of online gaming. Lily, the young woman, was a gamer, and at university studying to make both playing and designing online games her career. There is a strong connection with one of the Bonfire Societies, and Holly finds they are as close-mouthed about their activities as the Freemasons. 

And then there's Kyra... 

As the investigation progresses Holly finds herself up against one obstacle after another. It doesn't help that the power struggles she encounters include one very close to home; one member of the team is a resentful DI who thinks he should have been given the promotion awarded to Holly, and he has supporters among the junior ranks.  

It's hard to believe that this is Iona Hepburn's debut novel. She has created a cast of diverse characters with meticulous care, from Holly herself, striving to appear self-possessed and capable but underneath a mass of contradictions and uncertainties, to fey Natasha Ferdinand, hostile and disruptive DI Devlin, and Josh, a rich young dilettante film producer. There's also Ian, Holly's amiable partner, and his engaging son Joe; Margot, her spiky but supportive boss. And of course, Kyra, who has survived their teenage rift far better than Holly from an emotional point of view. And a host of other players, all sharply drawn and individual. 

Holly is faced with an almost impossible task, and at the same time needs to deal with her own private life –   her conflicted feelings, both for Ian and Joe, and for Kyra, and how whatever conclusion he reaches will affect her wider family. 

More power to Iona Hepburn for keeping a firm hold on all these threads and ensuring they don't break as she gets to the bottom of the murders. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of DCI Holly Hennessy.
 ---------
Reviewer: Lynne Patrick 

Iona Hepburn is an ICU doctor who has worked in Lewes, taught at Sussex University, and now lives in Brighton with her wife and daughter. She likens her medical career to that of police detectives in their shared sense of humanity and overfamiliarity with death. Bonfire is her debut novel. 

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘The Killer's Mark’ by M W Craven

Published by Constable,
13 August 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-40871759-2 (HB)

The first few pages give us a mysterious safe-within-a-safe which is found in the house of a recently-dead Vice-Admiral; there's a tattoo artist who creates portraits of women on the soles of their feet; and ex-cop turned PI Washington Poe, about to take on the case of a stroppy teenager whose presumed-dead mother has turned out to be alive and working in porn movies... 

This was the kind of read that shows why M W Craven is a household name. The characters were fantastic: smart, permanently should-be-dieting Poe and his sidekick Tilly Bradshaw, a computer whizz and vegan non-swearer. The teenager is Esmerée Blue who explodes into their PI agency with attitude and wise-cracks covering her vulnerability. There are also Poe's on-call muscle Matt Towler, and Tilly's other boss, the highly-placed spy-master Alastor Locke. Their pursuit of Esmerée's mother, Océane Blue, brings them up against a terrifyingly violent Chinese gang, the Red Chamber, and there are a couple of episodes that aren't for the squeamish, though they're quickly over - on the whole the violence is off-stage. The underlying crime is plausible and horrible. The constant action and short chapters (2-3 pages each) keep the pages turning fast, and the wisecracks were laugh-out-loud funny. The action's mostly in Carlisle, with trips to London, Newcastle and Poe's wife's stately home of Highwood. 

A racy, twisty PI with wonderful characters, a fair body count and a riveting plot. This is the 8th Poe novel. There are a references to previous books, particularly in the final ransom drop sequence, and a number of spoilers, but I had no difficulty with catching up on the characters, even though it was the first M W Craven I'd read. I'll certainly be reading more! If you like starting with no 1, the first Washington Poe novel is The Puppet Show.
---------
Reviewer: Marsali Taylor 

M. W. Craven was born in Cumbria in 1968 but grew up in the North East. He trained for two years as an armourer before spending the next ten being paid to travel the world and drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol. In 1995, sick of writing postcards and having fun, he decided it might be time to do something a bit more sensible. And it doesn't get more sensible than doing a law degree. So, he did Social Work instead. Two years later he started working in Cumbria as a probation officer. Sixteen years later he took the plunge and became a full-time writer. Mike's first Washington Poe novel The Pupped Show, won the Gold Dagger for best novel in 2019.  The Botanist, published in 2022, the fifth book in the series won the Gold Dagger. There are now eight books in the series.  He lives in Carlisle. Mike is a member of the Crime Writers' Association, the International Thriller Writers' Association, and the Mystery People Group.

http://www.mwcraven.com/ 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  

Click on the title to read a review of her recent book
Death in a Shetland Family

www.marsalitaylor.co.uk

‘Galway’s Edge’ by Ken Bruen

Published by Head of Zeus,
24 September 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-035924066 (HB)

In one sense it is sad to be reviewing this novel, as Ken Bruen died last year and ‘Galway’s Edge’ is the last of his 20 stories featuring Jack Taylor. In another it is a perverse pleasure to be savouring again Bruen’s vivid and violent world in the west of Ireland. 

Edge is a group of powerful figures in Galway which aims to rid the city of criminals and abusers. The Vatican, which considers Edge to be anti-Catholic, is not pleased when it discovers that a priest, Father Whelan, has joined it. Father Richard, special envoy to the Archdiocese of Galway, Tuam, and Athenry, is sent by a
foul-mouthed monsignor to request (a polite description) Taylor to speak to Whelan and dissuade him from membership. Father Richard is corpulent, hard-drinking and equally hard-eating (the pope had once referred to him as ‘an ecclesiastical barracuda’). Taylor, ex-garda and equally hard drinking, agrees to speak to Whelan. The day after he does so, Whelan is found hanged. This raises at least two questions: would Edge murder one of its own? Or, if not, who would be sufficiently courageous to take such a swipe at the organisation? Before long another member of Edge is brutally murdered, stabbed 50 times. 

As with its predecessor ‘Galway Confidential’, a convent is involved. Taylor is asked to investigate the disappearance of a valued crucifix. Via his criminal contacts, Taylor discovers what has happened to it and organises its recovery from the office of an unscrupulous businessman who surrounds himself with heavies. Although it ends well for the nuns, it doesn’t end well for the career burglar who recovers it and precipitates Taylor into more trouble. He is already tangling with a violent garda who is beating his wife. He is also asked to discredit suggestions of child abuse against another priest. 

An exchange gives a good idea of the world Taylor inhabits. ‘Don’t you have, like, any regular friends, I mean ordinary folk? Does everyone in your battered universe have a story?’ a friend asks, to which the response is ‘There’s a neon sign above my head that welcomes the weird and marginalised.’ Taylor inhabits a violent world and certainly mixes with low life, but there is an underlying sense of decency about everything he does (he won’t, for instance, drink Jameson’s whiskey as it is being exported to Russia!), as there is with most of his criminal friends. Persons who have no essential decency receive their comeuppance. 

As with Bruen’s previous novels, the action is punctuated by contemporary news (Trump and Putin, for example), often of a dispiriting nature. ‘What happened to our country?’ Taylor asks at one point. Bon mots from other writers appear between chapters. 

Bruen’s style is notoriously sparse. Were there an award for the fewest words on the page of a crime novel, he would win it hands down. He would win another award for the shortest sentences. Sometimes they’re not even sentences. He doesn’t really go in for descriptions of persons or place. It’s all in the dialogue or extremely pithy observations, and from these the reader enters another world. One begins to wonder why other novelists bother with their often-wordy descriptions. The answer is that they wouldn’t do the pared back style as convincingly as Bruen. The crime world has lost a truly individual voice. It is fortunate indeed that he has left us so many novels (there are many more than just the Taylor series). My introduction to Bruen was ‘Galway Confidential’. I hope to read the other 18 novels in the series and, if you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to do the same.
----------
Reviewer: David Whittle

Ken Bruen (1951-2025) was born in Galway, Republic of Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin.  He spent 25 years as a teacher in Africa, Japan, SE Asia & South America. An unscheduled stint in a Brazilian prison, where he suffered physical & mental abuse, spurred him to write. After a brief spell teaching in London, he returned to Ireland. He was the recipient of two Barry Awards His critically acclaimed Jack Taylor series was made into a successful TV adaptation.

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. 

Death in the Dales: Report by Wendy Nakanishi

The weekend of 16-18 October saw the third annual ‘Death in the Dales’ conference convened in beautiful Sedbergh, known as England’s ‘Book Town,’ at the People’s Hall, with its dramatic backdrop of fells steeply climbing to the horizon.

 

Largely organised by Jean C. Briggs (aka J.C. Briggs, popular and prolific author of Victorian murder mysteries), an event called ’Noir at the Bar’ kicked off the festivities on Friday night with a showing of the famed classic Detour accompanied by a pie and peas supper. 

We were joined In England’s Book Town by these twelve northern writers for three days of film, performance and panels at venues across the town:

Martin Edwards
Kate Ellis
Antony Johnston
Roger Price
Nick Oldham
Simon Dinsdale
Dolores Gordon Smith
Tom Mead
Victoria Dowd
Christine Poulson
Fiona Veitch Smith
Deborah Swift
Jason Monagahan
Simon Michael
Priscilla Masters
Marsali Taylor
Matthw Booth. 

Presentations on Saturday included one on the current popularity of puzzles and interactive mysteries. 

Another discussed how true crime can be stranger than fiction.

 In a third, authors were asked to describe ‘haunted places’ they have encountered.

And three policemen (now retired) turned authors described how their experiences as cops have seeped into their writing.

 ‘Murder at Monksdale Manor,’ a mini drama composed by Martin Edwards, in which the the audience was invited to solve a crime based on testimony delivered by four suspect rounded off the evening. 

Sunday morning featured first a panel of three male authors, and then one of three female writers, discussing their books, with the conference ending with a marvellously entertaining performance by the talented author and actor manque, Matthew Booth.

‘In Plain Sight’ by Marion Todd

Published by Canelo Crime,
23 July 2020.
ISBN: 978-1-78863819-7

DI Clare MacKay and DS West are taking part in a charity run on the beach. There were fifty- or sixty-people taking part, and suddenly they just came to a halt.Bloody protesters at least thirty of the lying across the beach, Jim, her sergeant called out. Clare ran back to two uniformed officers telling them to get onto the station and request at least six more bodies and a couple of vans to get this lot shifted.

An elderly whitehaired man stood up from the sitting protesters and announced. We represent NEFEW. We object to McIntosh Water’s plan to build a bottled water plant on Priory Marsh. He continued ‘Priory Marsh is home to several rare examples of lichens.’ There was a ripple of applause from the protestors. Clare regarded them unimpressed. ‘I appreciate that but you’re disrupting a charitable event here. I’m guessing you don’t have a permit for this protest. Clare looked across the dunes and could see the first of the police cars approaching. The white-haired man opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled by an ear-piercing scream that came from somewhere behind Clare. She turned to see a woman around thirty a short distance away, one hand on a pram handle. She cried out. ‘My baby, someone’s taken my baby.’ 

The woman had now been Joined by a man, Clare assumed was the baby’s father.  In response to Clare’s gentle prompts, she learns that the baby was a girl, six months old, and she had small purple birthmark on her neck. Clara turned to her colleague Sara and said take the parents’ home and stick to them like glue. 

Kevin and Lisa Michell lived in a modern, detached villa on the outskirts of St Andrews. A red Audi A3 and a Black Volkswagen Arteon sat on a hard standing at the front of the house. It was clear that they were comfortably off. 

Clare tells the parents that she has alerted colleagues in Dundee and Fife. She asks Lisa who they can call for her, but it appears that she in not in touch with her sister, and her mother is dead. Trying to pinpoint when exactly baby Abigail was taken Kevin said there was a pizza delivery bike heading away towards the main road, and I said to Lisa we should have phoned for a pizza. When the doctor arrived his first words were ‘did you give Abi her medicine this morning?’ Lisa went into blind panic, ‘We have to find her now?’ Abi has a congenital heart defect, the doctor explained. She needs digoxin twice a day. 

When DI Clare Mackay learns that the baby has potentially fatal medical condition, she knows that she and her team are in a race against the clock. 

As Clare investigates, she soon realises this victim wasn't selected at random. Someone knows who took the baby girl, and why. Which of the residents of St Andrews is hiding something and why? And what are the Mitchells hiding?  

With twists and turns, this is a mystery full of surprises. Will Clare and her team find Abi before it’s too late.  A compelling read.  Recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett 

Marion Todd is a native of Dundee. She studied music and worked for many years as a piano teacher and jobbing accompanist. Now a full-time writer, Marion lives in North-east Fife, overlooking the River Tay. She is the author of the bestselling DI Clare Mackay series, which has sold over half a million copies. Marion can be found @MarionETodd on X. 

                               https://www.mariontodd.com/