Carolyn G. Hart

#2

A retired botanist comes to stay in a charming English village, where murder and blackmail disturb the bucolic peace in this mystery series debut. No longer on the sprightly side of seventy, Professor Andrew Basnett is looking forward to retirement and finally digging into the biography he plans to write about an obscure seventeenth century botanist. While his flat in town is renovated, he settles into a little village in Oxfordshire where he’s borrowed his nephew’s cottage. It sounds perfectly pleasant, even with the village murderess living right up the road. Basnett’s nephew informs him that Pauline Hewison’s case never came to trial because she had the perfect alibi. Not entirely comforted, Basnett is more unnerved when a blizzard knocks out the power and provides a dark, snowy night just like the one six years ago when someone shot Charles Hewison through the head. It doesn’t help that there’s been another murder and that Pauline, once again, has motive to spare.

#3

When Eric Ward and Sharon Owen defend suspected serial killer Raymond Conroy, they win an acquittal on a technicality, thus incurring the wrath of CI Charlie Spate. Ward has no desire to act further for Conroy when the man decides to remain in the northeast. Instead, he concentrates on issues arising from Sharon's family trust although he is continually harassed by a journalist who seeks to interview Conroy. When Conroy disappears and the Zodiac Killer strikes again, Ward finds himself involved once more alongside CI Spate, who is under pressure for his apparent incompetence in tracking Conroy.