Death on the Pier (Inspector Ryga Mysteries #6)

Meet Inspector Alun Ryga of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad. Having survived WW2 in a prisoner of war camp, he’s vowed to get justice for those who need it.

1951, Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

One scorching summer evening, Commander Clive Cottinglea is returning home from the yacht club when he stumbles across a body at the bottom of the cliff lift.

By the time he fetches the beat constable, not only has the corpse vanished — but there’s no trace it was ever there. No blood. No broken twigs. No trampled flowers.

The local Southend police are baffled. How can they investigate a murder without evidence or a body?

The worried chief constable calls in a favour from Detective Superintendent Street at Scotland Yard — who knows just the man for the job.

Inspector Alun Ryga is dispatched undercover to the Essex coast to conduct a discreet investigation. He soon discovers unsettling contradictions in the retired commander’s story.

But the peculiar case then takes a deadly turn when another body is discovered on a deckchair on the pier . . .

Fans of Elly Griffiths, Laura Wilson, Anthony Horowitz, Robert Harris, Philip Kerr, Frederick Forsyth and Keith Finney will devour this series of enthralling historical crime mysteries set in 1950s England — a time of rationing and recovery from the struggles of the Second World War.