A Death Before Closing Time

The vicar is dead. The secrets died with him.

When Harriet Crowe finds Reverend Holt's body among the theology shelves of her bookshop - seated upright, almost peaceful, with bookbinder's thread wound twice around his neck - she knows two things immediately. Someone in Bramblewood wanted him silenced. And the shop was her responsibility.

Holt was her late husband Gerald's closest friend. He knew things about Gerald. Things he had been on the verge of telling her. Now he never will.

As Harriet begins asking questions the police haven't thought to ask, she finds a village full of people with something to hide - the tearoom owner who lost her lease bid, the parish council chairman with suspicious finances, the estranged sister who didn't mourn, the hairdresser with a desperate secret, and the deacon who is lying about everything except the murder.

But the truth, when it comes, will not look like any of them.

A Death Before Closing Time is the first book in the Bramblewood Mysteries - a traditional British cozy mystery series set in a Somerset village where everyone knows everyone's business, and the secrets are older than the cobblestones.

Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, MC Beaton, and Alexander McCall Smith.