The Blackout Murders
(2025)(The first book in the Hawthorne Blackout Mystery series)
A novel by Diana Beckett
When the lights go out, the killing starts.
England, 1941. Iris Lockwood spends her nights patrolling the blackout streets of Hawthorne Harbor, checking shuttered windows and shouting at careless neighbors who forget to kill their lamps. She tells herself she is only doing her bit for the war, that the past is buried where no one can touch it.
Then, during a coastal air raid alarm, Iris trips over the body of a young woman in a narrow lane. The death is ruled a tragic accident, blamed on falling debris and panic. Iris was there. She knows the sky never dropped a thing.
The scene is too precise, too familiar. Ten years earlier, Iris lost her best friend in the same lane on another darkened night, and the official report read almost word for word the same. That ‘accident’ ended with a closed file, a quick funeral, and a warning to keep quiet.
Now someone is killing under cover of the blackout, and Iris is the only one who sees the pattern.
With the local police stretched thin, Iris forces an uneasy partnership with Sergeant Tom Hadley, a guarded officer who would rather fight the enemy he can see. Together with Beatrice North, a sharp tongued widow who hears every scrap of town gossip, Iris starts pulling at threads that lead straight into Hawthorne’s most respected homes.
As bombs fall in the distance and suspicion turns neighbor against neighbor, Iris must decide how much of her own history she can risk to expose a killer who has already stolen one life from her.
The Blackout Murders is the gripping first novel in the Hawthorne Blackout Mysteries, a wartime crime series perfect for readers who love World War II historical fiction, small town secrets, and fearless female sleuths who refuse to look away.
Genre: Mystery
England, 1941. Iris Lockwood spends her nights patrolling the blackout streets of Hawthorne Harbor, checking shuttered windows and shouting at careless neighbors who forget to kill their lamps. She tells herself she is only doing her bit for the war, that the past is buried where no one can touch it.
Then, during a coastal air raid alarm, Iris trips over the body of a young woman in a narrow lane. The death is ruled a tragic accident, blamed on falling debris and panic. Iris was there. She knows the sky never dropped a thing.
The scene is too precise, too familiar. Ten years earlier, Iris lost her best friend in the same lane on another darkened night, and the official report read almost word for word the same. That ‘accident’ ended with a closed file, a quick funeral, and a warning to keep quiet.
Now someone is killing under cover of the blackout, and Iris is the only one who sees the pattern.
With the local police stretched thin, Iris forces an uneasy partnership with Sergeant Tom Hadley, a guarded officer who would rather fight the enemy he can see. Together with Beatrice North, a sharp tongued widow who hears every scrap of town gossip, Iris starts pulling at threads that lead straight into Hawthorne’s most respected homes.
As bombs fall in the distance and suspicion turns neighbor against neighbor, Iris must decide how much of her own history she can risk to expose a killer who has already stolen one life from her.
The Blackout Murders is the gripping first novel in the Hawthorne Blackout Mysteries, a wartime crime series perfect for readers who love World War II historical fiction, small town secrets, and fearless female sleuths who refuse to look away.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Diana Beckett's The Blackout Murders