“In the books, they call it a locked-room mystery.”

The guests are arriving at the Orange Tree Hotel in sunny Spain. Marley, on holiday with her mother, hoping for some time away from her life as a carer for her. Sanjay, a would-be journalist, hoping for some rest and relaxation and a chance to repair his relationship with his boyfriend. Sally, the niece of the owner, and horrified to discover that the ex-boyfriend of her travelling companion is also on the trip. And Terry, a Yorkshireman on holiday with his long-suffering wife.

It’s only a couple of days before the hotel’s owner, Russell, is found dead, locked inside the hotel gym. His wounds could not have occurred accidentally – but how could anyone have bypassed the computerised security locks? Luckily for everyone, apart from the murderer, the mysterious Penny Haylestone is also at the hotel, determined to find out who killed her friend. But the killer isn’t done yet…

Dear Publishers, Book Agents, TV Producers et al;

You know the sort of thing that’s selling at the moment? Mystery fiction. And it seems to me that there are two tranches that seem to be doing particularly well. There’s the classic, so-called cosy, mysteries, which are harking back to the days of Agatha Christie by not dwelling on the messiness (while still taking things seriously and not dodging important topics). Well, if you want one of those, you could do a lot worse than taking a look at Sun, Sea and Murder. There’s a whiff of Death In Paradise about things, albeit in Spain, with a nice collection of characters. Even Terry, who is rather objectionable at times, comes across a full rounded (if a bit stereotypical) person, and there are characters here, especially Marley and Sally who you end up really caring about what happens to them, hoping that they aren’t the murderer. There’s a really clever central idea here in the plot structure (annoyingly it’s a little similar to one that I was going to use in one of my great completely-unwritten and only vaguely-plotted magnum opuses) that works very well in the misdirection stakes. There’s even clues – you might be unaware of what these are, as a number of cosy writers don’t use them – but they help the reader play along…

And the other thing that people seem to like – multiple narrators. This one is told from the overlapping points of view of the four characters I mentioned in the introduction above. Admittedly, this is used effectively here and not just to pad the page count, but it gives the traditional mystery a modern feel and helps the reader invest in the characters. And, of course, there is every chance that the narrators aren’t telling everything they know…

Sun, Sea and Murder is being published on April 1^st 2024, and, like the author’s first book, The Mystery Of Treefall Manor, has the feel of the start of a series. If you had any sense, you’d be snapping these up – they’d both make great TV adaptations, for example. At the moment, the series are self-published, but it deserves to get as wide an audience as possible. So I’d get moving if I were you before someone gets there first.

Kind regards

The Puzzle Doctor

PS I should say that the author was kind enough to send me a proof of this one, but that hasn’t biased me one bit. This is a fantastic book and any fans of mysteries will enjoy it tremendously.