The Margin of Murder
When retired London editor Maurice Vale leaves behind deadlines, literary feuds, and the exhaustion of publishing life, he dreams of a quieter existence among dusty shelves and honey-colored stone cottages in the peaceful village of Brindlecombe.
His new bookshop, Second Chapter Books, seems the perfect refuge.
Until the morning he discovers a rare first-edition novel shoved behind a shelf, stuffed with decades-old receipts, annotated margins, and a cryptic unsigned letter claiming a local woman ‘was silenced before she could expose what happened in the winter of 1983.’
Maurice assumes it’s literary gossip until celebrated novelist Celia Ashcroft arrives in the village for the annual Brindlecombe Literary Weekend and is found dead beside the river hours later.
As village tensions rise and old loyalties crack beneath polished smiles, Maurice realizes the letter was telling the truth. Someone has spent forty years protecting a terrible secret hidden between the pages of a book.
And they may be willing to kill again to keep the final chapter unwritten.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
When retired London editor Maurice Vale leaves behind deadlines, literary feuds, and the exhaustion of publishing life, he dreams of a quieter existence among dusty shelves and honey-colored stone cottages in the peaceful village of Brindlecombe.
His new bookshop, Second Chapter Books, seems the perfect refuge.
Until the morning he discovers a rare first-edition novel shoved behind a shelf, stuffed with decades-old receipts, annotated margins, and a cryptic unsigned letter claiming a local woman ‘was silenced before she could expose what happened in the winter of 1983.’
Maurice assumes it’s literary gossip until celebrated novelist Celia Ashcroft arrives in the village for the annual Brindlecombe Literary Weekend and is found dead beside the river hours later.
As village tensions rise and old loyalties crack beneath polished smiles, Maurice realizes the letter was telling the truth. Someone has spent forty years protecting a terrible secret hidden between the pages of a book.
And they may be willing to kill again to keep the final chapter unwritten.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for J A Clarke's The Margin of Murder