PUBLISHED BY ZAFFRE ON THE 8th JUNE 2023
For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy Cotswold village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their unexpected first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam. But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local antenatal class and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.
With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice sets out to solve the mystery and clear her name, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meets the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.
Kat Ailes‘ debut novel was runner-up for the Comedy Women in Print Unpublished Prize 2021. She works as an editor and freelanced for several years to allow her to take a couple of belated gap years, including hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. She now lives in the Cotswolds with her lovely husband and son and her beautiful but foolish dog.
A nice cosy crime for lovers of this type of story, still keeps you trying to figure out who did it and why, of course, I did not get it until the end but you might. Wasn’t expecting some bits of the story so it all goes to keeping you turning those pages. I enjoyed this crime and new babies as it made it all a bit different.
Available on Amazon here.
