"Murder in the Family" by Faith Martin

You have to watch out for what can happen in an allotment. 

An allotment is a small piece of land rented or assigned to an individual or family for growing flowers or vegetables. It’s more common in Britain than the U.S., and allotments can often be found in villages and council estates where free land is at a premium. 

Detective Inspector Hillary Greene of the Thames Valley Police in Oxford is called to an allotment in a small, nearby village. With her team, she finds a 15-year-old boy in a potting shed – stabbed to death with a pair of shears. Worse still, the boy’s body has been discovered by his 11-year-old sister. 

Greene has just received an award for bravery – she saved her boss’s life in a drug raid that went very wrong – and she learns that her temporary assignment in her boss’s position is just that – temporary. He’s moved upstairs to a bigger job, and his replacement turns out to be the policeman who investigated Greene after her crooked cop husband died. 

Faith Martin

As the team investigates, the case presents one blind alley after another. Until, they begin to consider how the victim might have paid for a very expensive bike, and what else he might have been doing with his camera besides taking nature photographs. Blackmail is rearing its ugly head. 

Murder in the Family is the fifth DI Hillary Greene mystery by British author Faith Martin. Martin manages to develop the main mystery story alongside the sub-stories of Greene and her team. And change is certainly in the air, with one member preparing for a promotion at a different station and one considering whether or not to resume her involvement with Greene’s former boss. In fine fashion, the plot and all three sub-plots tie up nicely at the end – and prepare us for the next mystery adventure. 

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.