29 January 2026.
ISBN: 9778-0-349-44299-0 (HB)
Television personality and presenter Lexi Verity has moved to the Yorkshire village of Eaglethorpe to escape from the prying eyes of fans and reporters and find some privacy in the countryside. Lexi’s second husband, Lord Pilton, a successful businessman, had advocated that Lexi left London because he believed she would be safer away from the city, after she had been stalked by an obsessed and ruthless fan, Nathan Corde, who has been imprisoned for his actions.
Lord Pilton is abroad, dealing with business, and Lexi has been left alone in the house, because her staff have the afternoon off. When her housekeeper, Margaret Cramp, returns, she finds Lexi dead in her private swimming pool. In panic, Margaret phones her cousin’s husband, Detective Sergeant Sunny Porter, who alerts his superiors, Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet and Detective Chief Inspector Emily Thwaite.
When the police discover that Nathan Corde was recently released from prison, and has been seen in the locality, the case seems open and shut, especially as Corde has now vanished from sight. Emily is convinced that the whole thing will be over as soon as they locate Corde. Joe hopes that his DCI is right, but he is not totally convinced that the straightforward solution is correct.
Unfortunately, finding Corde is easier said than done, as the Lexi’s stalker has acquired survival skills that make it easy for him to live in the wild without being detected. Corde may be the obvious suspect, but he is not the only one, and, while keeping up the hunt for the obsessed stalker, Joe and Emily have to consider the other people who may have reasons to harm Lexi. The other possible suspects are surprisingly numerous; they come from all walks of life, and are drawn from Lexi’s personal and public life, but it soon becomes clear that nobody knows much about the real Lexi, who concealed her true self beneath her bright television persona. The detectives also struggle to find out the truth about Lexi’s past life, and are faced with the question, who was she before she became Lexi Verity? Does the motive for her death lie in Lexi’s current fame, or in who she was before she became famous?
Emily has a busy domestic life with her husband and children, but Joe lives alone since the tragic death of his wife. In the evenings, he is grateful for the occasional company of his good friend, Canon George Merryweather, Diocesan Consultant on Deliverance and the Occult, and glad of the distraction when George tells him about a newly arrived family who have asked for George’s advice. The children of this family have been seeing the ghosts of a young girl and a man and have smelled burning. The family’s neighbour, Penny, a local solicitor, tells the children’s father, Ben, that there had been a fatal fire in the building, in which a young girl had died, after which a man committed suicide.
This convinces Ben to talk to George about the possibility of performing what used to be called an exorcism. Joe is more naturally religious and open minded regarding psychic matters than his down-to-earth colleague, which means he is less sceptical than Emily about the involvement of a psychic medium that Lexi had consulted a short while before her death. However, both Joe and Emily are uncertain that there is any link between Lexi’s death and the ghostly apparitions that Ben’s children claim to have seen. Then the death toll rises, and Joe and Emily have to act quickly and decisively in a desperate race to save other innocent lives.
Killing in the Shadows is the sixth book in the series featuring Joe Plantagenet.
It is an excellent story, with engaging central characters that depict the
police as human and vulnerable, but also caring and decent people. The plot is
complex but coherent, with many skilfully laid false trails, and the book has a
fascinating setting. This is a very enjoyable read, which I thoroughly
recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron-
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