Retired DI Hillary Greene, now a civilian consultant to the Thames Valley Police on cold cases, has a new mystery to unravel with her team. And she has the mystery of her own health.
Thirty years earlier, right before Christmas, a parish vicar was murdered in the doorway of the vicarage. The medical examiner suggested the means was something like a common garden shovel, but the weapon was never found. And many of the people interviewed at the time have died or moved away. Yet two of the potential suspects start receiving blackmail notes, and it appears that the cold case crime is now getting bound up with a wholly new crime.
But who would want to kill a vicar, reportedly liked by everyone, some to the point of having major crushes on the man? For Greene and her team, this looks like a personal crime, but there’s nothing in the vicar’s background that offers a clue.
At the same time, Hillary’s nagging cough, though to be a chest or lung infection, is turning into something else entirely. And now she has to have tests run, the results of which she may not be ready for.
Murder in the Parish is the twentieth DI Hillary Greene novel by British writer Faith Martin, and it’s unusual in the series in that the cold case involved is really, really cold and offers virtually no clues as to a possible solution. The reader gets hints that the investigating team doesn’t get, with some of those involved in or affected by the original crime having conversations or doing things the police are unaware of. But it’s an engaging, riveting story, not the least reason being what is happening to Hillary herself.
In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.
Related:
Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin.
Murder at the University by Faith Martin.
Murder of the Bride by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Village by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Family by Faith Martin.
Murder at Home by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Mansion by Faith Martin.
Murder by Fire by Faith Martin.
Murder at Work by Faith Martin.
Murder Never Retires by Faith Martin.
Murder of a Lover by Faith Martin.
Murder Never Misses by Faith Martin.
Murder by Candlelight by Faith Martin.
Murder in Mind by Faith Martin.
Hillary’s Final Case by Faith Martin.
Hillary’s Back! by Faith Martin.
Murder Now and Then by Faith Martin.
Some Monday Readings
Agatha Christie, Below the Equator – Naomi Kaye at CrimeReads.
Saving Classical Music: A Return to Tradition – Andrew Balio at The Imaginative Conservative.
Gulf of Mexico / Gulf of America : Highlighting Civil War Era Location Literacy – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.
Last Boys at the Beginning of History – Mana Asfari at The Point Magazine.
Ethan Haim: ‘We Took On the Federal Leviathan and We Won’ – Emily Yoffe at The Free Press.
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