Bloodshed in the Bookshop

Meet Carole and Jude, two chalk-and-cheese neighbours who team up to solve a baffling crime.

Murder is the latest must-read in the sleepy village of Fethering.

The local bookshop, Shelf Determination, has a new crime section. Its name – The Blood Shed – is, Carole Seddon thinks, rather vulgar.

Then someone takes the theme a little too literally.

After a tedious evening with a decidedly self-important cozy crime writer and her crime-solving cat, Jude returns for her forgotten scarf – and finds the owner’s husband sprawled on the bookshop floor. Stabbed to death.

There’s no shortage of the victim’s furious daughter. A pompous local poet with a grudge. A jealous husband. And enough simmering resentments to fill an entire bookshelf.

The police have their theories.

Carole and Jude have better ones.

But if they are to unearth the killer, they must read very carefully between the lines . . .

**A CWA DIAMOND DAGGER AWARD WINNER!**

Fans of Agatha Christie, Robert Thorogood, M.C. Beaton, The Thursday Murder Club, Faith Martin, Janice Hallett and Peter Boland will be hooked from the very first page!
MEET THE SLEUTHS
Carole
If British restraint could take human form, it would look suspiciously like Carole Seddon. A retired civil servant with a penchant for order, she keeps her seaside life as tightly buttoned as her sensible raincoat. Carole enjoys the routine, solitude, and a well-mannered Labrador named Gulliver (at least he doesn’t answer back like her troublesome ex-husband).

Jude
On the other side of the spectrum (and Carole’s garden fence) lives Jude, a woman of mystery and many scarves. Unlike Carole, free-spirited healer Jude is perfectly at ease with life’s chaos — actually, she thrives on it.

Together, they make the most unlikely crime-solving one stiff as a starched collar, the other as loose as a yoga instructor at a full moon retreat. But their complementary skill sets prove surprisingly effective at solving murders in their sleepy seaside town.