The Alderwick Coast Road Case
(2026)(The fourth book in the Alderwick Second Tide Mystery series)
A novel by Claire Bessey
Tess Alden was supposed to be taking a break.
After months of murders, missing objects, and old houses with too much to hide, a countryside antiques weekend with Rhys Penwarden sounds like the first sensible thing Tess has done in a long time. A neighboring town fair, a few quiet dealer stops, a change of view, and time away from Second Tide should feel like relief. Instead, the trip turns personal before it even begins when Tess’s mother and younger sister arrive unexpectedly from Chicago and get folded into the weekend she never meant to share.
Then Tess spots a silver calling-card case that should not be in private circulation.
The piece is small, elegant, and dangerous in exactly the way Tess has learned to fear. Its engraved initials and domestic wear tie it to an Alderwick-linked property transfer that should have been closed years ago. Before she can trace the route properly, a dealer connected to the fair is found dead by the coast road. What first looks like one more suspicious antique quickly opens into something larger and uglier: a private lot broken before probate was properly settled, quiet dealer handling, outside buyer routes, and a trade built on making family rooms smaller on paper before their contents disappear into other people’s houses.
As Tess follows the silver case through dealer vans, fair records, roadside meetings, and old transfer notes, the murder stops looking like a simple crime of greed. Someone is not just protecting an object. Someone is protecting the broken chain behind it. And with her own family close enough to stir up the life she thought she had left behind, Tess is forced to confront more than one kind of inheritance at once.
With Tide at her side, Rhys reading routes and practical movement with his usual grounded skill, and Alderwick’s long pattern of quiet object laundering widening beyond the village itself, Tess must uncover who used the fair as cover, who has been profiting from unsettled probate for years, and why one small silver case carries enough history to get a man killed by the roadside.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, seaside village mysteries, antique fair mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, female sleuth mysteries, small town murder mysteries, and clean cozy crime with family secrets, slow-burn romantic tension, old houses, and hidden paper trails, Book 4 expands the series in a bigger, sharper direction. This is a mystery about inheritance, private sales, dealer routes, and the polished social language people use when they want theft to sound reasonable.
In Alderwick, old rooms do not stay local forever. Sometimes they travel.
Genre: Mystery
After months of murders, missing objects, and old houses with too much to hide, a countryside antiques weekend with Rhys Penwarden sounds like the first sensible thing Tess has done in a long time. A neighboring town fair, a few quiet dealer stops, a change of view, and time away from Second Tide should feel like relief. Instead, the trip turns personal before it even begins when Tess’s mother and younger sister arrive unexpectedly from Chicago and get folded into the weekend she never meant to share.
Then Tess spots a silver calling-card case that should not be in private circulation.
The piece is small, elegant, and dangerous in exactly the way Tess has learned to fear. Its engraved initials and domestic wear tie it to an Alderwick-linked property transfer that should have been closed years ago. Before she can trace the route properly, a dealer connected to the fair is found dead by the coast road. What first looks like one more suspicious antique quickly opens into something larger and uglier: a private lot broken before probate was properly settled, quiet dealer handling, outside buyer routes, and a trade built on making family rooms smaller on paper before their contents disappear into other people’s houses.
As Tess follows the silver case through dealer vans, fair records, roadside meetings, and old transfer notes, the murder stops looking like a simple crime of greed. Someone is not just protecting an object. Someone is protecting the broken chain behind it. And with her own family close enough to stir up the life she thought she had left behind, Tess is forced to confront more than one kind of inheritance at once.
With Tide at her side, Rhys reading routes and practical movement with his usual grounded skill, and Alderwick’s long pattern of quiet object laundering widening beyond the village itself, Tess must uncover who used the fair as cover, who has been profiting from unsettled probate for years, and why one small silver case carries enough history to get a man killed by the roadside.
Perfect for readers who love British cozy mysteries, seaside village mysteries, antique fair mysteries, dog cozy mysteries, female sleuth mysteries, small town murder mysteries, and clean cozy crime with family secrets, slow-burn romantic tension, old houses, and hidden paper trails, Book 4 expands the series in a bigger, sharper direction. This is a mystery about inheritance, private sales, dealer routes, and the polished social language people use when they want theft to sound reasonable.
In Alderwick, old rooms do not stay local forever. Sometimes they travel.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Claire Bessey's The Alderwick Coast Road Case