Coming Soon: 'The Bones Beneath the Brambles' by Colin Bostock-Smith

Published by Diamond Crime

19 March 2026.

The 4th book in the PC Derek Martin mysteries.

When the bones of a young woman are dug up in a farmhouse garden, P.C. Derek Martin discovers a link between her death and pre-War English fascism. He is, however, distracted not just by the chance of a promotion to CID, which would uproot him and his wife Mary from their idyllic village life but also by an armed robbery. 

Meanwhile the huge but child-like Ivor, home on leave from his psychiatric hospital, becomes convinced that Mary is 'holy' and that Derek is the
 anti-Christ.

For a village copper, driven on by his famous niggles, it is almost too much to handle.

Colin Bostock-Smith was raised in a remote Devonshire village but made his way to London where he was first a journalist on the London Evening Standard, then turned to writing comedy scripts for Not the Nine ’Clock News, The Two Ronnies, The Clive James Show, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Basil Brush and even President Ronald Reagan. Today he lives in deepest East Sussex with his partner Ruth, and writes novels about crime and passion in a remote Devonshire village.

 https://www.facebook.com/colinbostocksmith