This book was OK but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a 'page turner' and I found the prose rather clumsy and try-hard in places. It's probably just me but I can't stand prose that tries to describe trivialities and details in an effort to make the story/characters more realistic, unless it's d...
I love starting out the New Year with a nice, grisly murder, don't you? Especially when it's set in the lovely Devonshire region of England, supplemented with a parallel storyline in which an Elizabethan woman is murdered for much the same reasons as the contemporary woman - poor, friendless soul...
An archaeological dig provides DI Wesley Peterson with a secret that may help him unveil the culprits behind a string of kidnappings Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976 and when he never returned home, his grieving family assumed the worst. Thirty years later, teenage singing star Leah Wakefie...
Norman Openheim is an American veteran of the D Day Landings on a sentimental journey with his old unit to their West Country base. His body is the last one archaeologist Neil Watson expects to find in the ruins of an old chantry chapel... Neil naturally turns to his old friend from student days...
When the body of a middle-aged woman is found hanging from a yew tree in Stokeworthy Churchyard, the police suspect foul play. But the victim is an unlikely one. Pauline Brent was the local doctor's receptionist, respected and well liked. She seems to have no real enemies-and yet someone killed h...
When workmen converting former girls' boarding school, Chadleigh Hall, into a luxury hotel find a skeleton in a sealed room, DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan are called in to investigate. Within minutes they have a second suspicious death on their hands—a team of marine archaeolog...
It seems they are led by a cruel and powerful Chief who has conquered many tribes and has many warriors under his command. By all accounts he is a clever and conscientious leader and a man to fear. Captain Radford, the President of our Council, observed that these native warriors greatly outnumbe...
‘The pretence is ended,’ she said, her dark eyes looking into mine. ‘I am no foreign lady, but my father is a stonemason in Exeter and there was one in that city I feared. So I fled and rode on a carrier’s cart all the way down to these parts. I amused myself by dressing in scraps of the brightly...
Things were getting worse in London so my mum decided to send me away. It must have been hard for her but she kept saying it was for the best. They told us we were going to Devon but I was only nine and I thought it must be just outside London somewhere. My mum told me not to complain and that wh...
The boat was listing, dancing up and down on the waves as if she was trying to prevent them retrieving the thing in the water. It was coming now though: the first lobster pot. Jason could see plastic inside, glistening in the weak sunlight.
Perhaps the restlessness of youth made him seek a more exciting existence than that offered by rural Devon with its life dictated by the seasons and the Church calendar. He abandoned this narrow, ordered country existence for London’s Elizabethan theatre which was as unres...
He wanted to thank him personally for saving his life. Eva Liversedge had been replaced by another PA. She had taken early retirement, Wesley was told, as the replacement, a younger version of the original, led him to the inner sanctum. The words ‘on a very generous pensio...
They ravaged and burned and took with them to their ships indescribable plunder. They killed many and had no mercy upon women and children and many they took as slaves aboard their boats. I witnessed such cruelty that I was certain the Devil guided the actions of the heathens. I saw babes slaught...
She had his address so he’d half expected her to turn up at the flat. She hadn’t, but he knew that it would only be a matter of time before he saw her again. When he arrived at Police Headquarters he made straight for Emily’s office, raising his hand in greeting to his colleagues as he went. DS S...
Master Jackson did give permission for me to write, yet now as I put pen to paper I am lost for what to say. I labour in the sugar plantations, as does Joseph. Hacking the sugar cane is punishing work in the heat that calls to my mind the fires of hell itself. Of my fellow labourers, all slaves, ...
This lack of intimate contact denied me a suitable opportunity to reveal my dilemma to him. I had no wish to be overheard by servants or to arouse the suspicions of those below stairs so I kept silent, nursing my secret. My waist was beginning to thicken and I knew that my...
My husband is to endow a chapel at the church of All Saints here in thanksgiving for his deliverance from the dangers of battle, and we shall make provision for our tombs there and those of our children and cause Masses to be said there for our souls. We rejoice also becau...
She was a thin, nervous creature who reminded me of a startled deer. Her name was Amy Hunting, not one of my parishioners … or at least not one I recognised as one of my regular congregation. I invited her into the study and asked Mrs O’Donovan to make us a cup of tea. To cut a long story short, ...
Neil Watson would find it at his flat when he arrived home and the writer wondered whether reading it would make him feel sad … or angry. Or just curious. Or perhaps the subject of blood would frighten him. The writer began to type. The story had to be told. Little by litt...
The police were still there and she wondered what they were doing that took so long. Some of them wore white suits and swarmed purposefully in and out of the door under the stairs which stood propped open. She could see that the basement was brightly lit now and she almost wished she could ventur...