In a grand old mansion in the middle of the Sussex countryside, seven people have seen more than they should...
James Ritchie was looking forward to a boys' day out with his son, Wilbur – even if he was a little late picking him up from the home of his ex-wife, Anna. Annoyed by his late arrival, and competing for their son's attention, Anna leaves the two of them to their day with the promise of a roast dinner when Wilbur returns.
But Anna will never see her family again. That afternoon, James and Wilbur are found dead, the victims of a double stabbing on the beach.
DI Toni Kemp, of Sussex police, must unravel a case that shocked the county to its core. What she discovers will lead her to Blacklock House, a grand country mansion, long ago converted into flats. Here in the middle of nowhere, where a peacock struts the lawn, and a fountain plays intermittently, seven long-term residents have seen more than they should.
But this is a community who are good at keeping secrets...
Cleaner-turned-detective Stella Darnell connects a murder in Tewkesbury Abbey to a decades-old mystery in wartime London. From the number 1 bestselling author of The Detective's Daughter.
London, 1940
A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he too is murdered.
Tewkesbury, 2020
Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. He was looking into the murder of police pathologist Dr Aleck Northcote - and was certain he had uncovered Northcote's real killer.
Stella Darnell used to run a detective agency alongside her cleaning business. She's moved to Tewkesbury to escape from death, not to court it - but Roddy died in her arms and, Stella is someone impelled to root out evil when she finds it. Now she is determined to hunt down Roddy's killer - but then she finds another body...
2021 Head of Zeus
Freddy left her childhood home in Newhaven twenty-two years ago and swore never to return. But now her parents are dead, and she's back in her hometown to help her brothers manage the family fishmonger. Nothing here has changed: the stink of fish coming up from the marshes; the shopping trolleys half-buried by muddy tides; the neighbours sniffing for a new piece of gossip. It's not what Freddy would have chosen, but at least while she's here she'll get to see her childhood best friends, Toni and Pauline. At school, the three of them were inseparable. The teachers called them the Mermaids for their obsession with the sea, and with each other. Then Pauline goes missing, and Freddy must decide. Go back to her new life, or stay and find her friend?
Praise for the author:
"One of the most original characters in British crime fiction ... Thomson's plots are original and she draws her characters with genuine affection" SUNDAY TIMES
"In the best traditions of the classic whodunnit, this is Midsomer Murders for grown-ups" SUNDAY EXPRESS
"A wonderfully eerie London setting and a chilling plot ... Lesley Thomson is one of our leading crime writers" ELLY GRIFFITHS
"A clever mystery plot ... Its excellence is in the characters, all credible and memorable" LITERARY REVIEW
"Gloriously well-written ... Thomson creates a rich and sinister world that is utterly unique" WILLIAM SHAW
Forty years ago, in the dark of the playground, two children's lives were changed for ever.
Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous. But as she pieces together the tragedy of what happened to Sarah, she is drawn into a story of jealousy, betrayal and the end of innocence. A story that has not yet reached its end...
'One of the most original characters in British crime fiction' SUNDAY TIMES.
'A class above' IAN RANKIN.
FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER OF THE DETECTIVE'S DAUGHTER.
Beneath the beauty lurks something bad...
June, 1977
As night falls, seventeen-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual short-cut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body, and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.
December, 1999
A manhunt is launched for a missing girl, Bryony Motson. The search leads Cotswold police to an ancient burial site outside Winchcombe. Here, inside a stone chamber, are the remains of Cassie Baker. Bryony is never found.
June, 2016
Stella Darnell, cleaner and private detective, moves to Winchcombe to solve the long-cold case. By now, evidence has decayed, gossip become fact, and witnesses forgotten what they saw. And, if there is a killer in their midst, it is someone who has got away with murder for twenty years. Someone who will do anything to keep it that way...
In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.
The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. In the Botanical Gardens at Kew, a lost little girl, dizzied by the heat, thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground. But when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, Stella Darnell, the detective's daughter, is investigating a chilling new case. What she uncovers will draw her into the obsessive world of botany, and towards an unsolved murder that has lain dormant for decades...
The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. Britain sweltered, trees and plants wilted, fire ripped through forests, and rivers ran dry. In London's Kew Gardens, a 10 year old was parted from her friends and, dizzied by scorching heat, wandered into its secluded undergrowth. She thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground, but when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, the detective's daughter, Stella Darnell, takes on a chilling new case. Along with her friend, Jack Harmon, she will be drawn to the secret spaces of Kew, into the obsessive world of botany, and towards an unsolved murder that has lain dormant for decades. This is the 5th story in the Detective's Daughter series.
Jack Harmon craves silence and a bird's eye view. From his new home in Palmyra Tower, he can raise binoculars to watch over west London. If he watches for long enough, he will learn who has secrets. He will learn who plans to kill. But Jack does not see everything. October 2013, the month of the great storm of St. Jude; a man dies beneath a late night Piccadilly line train, verdict suicide. Jack's friend Stella Darnell, the detective's daughter, suspects it could have been murder. Now Jack and Stella are stirring up the past with questions that no one wants answered; questions that lead to an unsolved case nearly 20 years old. This is the 3rd story in the Detective's Daughter series.
Stella Darnell cannot shake her father's legacy. A year after his death, she has discovered what looks like an unsolved case in his darkroom: a folder of unlabelled photographs of deserted streets. But why did her father - a Detective Chief Superintendent - never file them at the station? The oldest photo dates back to 1966, to a day when ten-year-old Mary Thornton was taking her little brother home from school. That afternoon, as the Moors Murderers were sent to prison for life, Mary witnessed something horrible that would haunt her forever. As Stella inches closer to the truth, the events of that day in 1966 will begin to haunt her too. This is the 2nd story in the Detective's Daughter series.
It was the murder that shocked the nation. Thirty years ago Kate Rokesmith went walking by the river with her young son. She never came home. For three decades her case file has lain, unsolved, in the corner of an attic-until Stella Darnell, daughter of Detective Chief Superintendent Darnell, starts to clear out her father's house after his death.
October, 1987: As a hurricane sweeps through Britain, a man's body slowly rots, locked inside an old water tower in west London. He carries no identification and fits no missing persons' description. His corpse is never claimed.
October, 2013: The month of the great storm of St Jude. A man dies beneath a late night Piccadilly line train. His brother insists he was murdered, but Jack, a train driver, is sure it was suicide.
