The detective's secret

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Rebecca Tope

After two disastrous housesitting incidents in which she unwittingly became embroiled in murder and mayhem, Thea Osbourne is only too happy to have a bit of peace and quiet. The only positive thing that came out of her experiences is her blossoming relationship with DI Phil Hollis and she relishes the thought of their spending some quality time together. Even meeting Phil's childhood acquaintance, the eccentric Ariadne, cannot detract from Thea's happiness. But the bad luck that plagues the hapless Thea and her beloved spaniel Hepzipah is never far away. With autumn drawing in, preparations for Samhain, or Halloween, are well underway when Ariadne discovers a very tangible reminder of the season of death on Notgrove Barrow: a body laid out like a sacrificial victim. Unlikely companions, Thea and Ariadne are thrown together as they try to uncover the events that led to the fatality.

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Celia Fremlin

Alice Saunders, striking out on her own following the traumatic break-up of her marriage, rents an attic room in a London boarding house. The house contains a curious assortment of people, including the neurotic Mary, who resents Alice's occupation of the attic, and is trying to conceal a murder.

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C.S. Forester

The Pursued is set against the quiet London suburbs of the 1930s and the daily life of a seemingly happy married couple. The prose is fast, pared-down and psychologically loaded, creating its own brand of English noir. Opening with a mysterious death, the plot reveals the inner workings of Marjorie and Ted's marriage, flecked with domestic abuse and sexual sado-masochism. Its thriller elements are blended with radical gender politics through this channel of disgruntled domesticity. A reader coming new to C S Forester might be forgiven for thinking this writer a woman. The domestic drudgery of Marjorie's everyday life is imagined in minute detail – the washing, cooking, shopping, the children, and the husband's tyrannical demands. The fulminating passions, the quiet rage, and the burning desire for violent revenge belongs largely to the disenfranchised female characters. Marjorie looks at her spinster friends – the newly independent, career-minded women of the 1930s – with a fear that she overcomes. Her mother, seemingly mild and meek, seethes with the sly, unquenchable vengeance of Clytemnestra.

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A.J. Cross

The New Year brings a gruesome new discovery for forensic psychologist Dr Kate Hanson and Birmingham's Unsolved Crimes Unit. A mummified body is found beneath the floorboards of a deserted lake house in Woodgate Country Park. The dead man was art student Nathan Troy, who disappeared twenty years ago, but evidence at the scene suggests the killer has been keeping an eye on his long-dead victim.