Severn House Publishers
Featuring: Alex Bailey-Jones
224 pages ISBN: 1780106262 EAN: 9781780106267 Kindle: B00UI4ES10 e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List
Author Stella Cameron has several best-selling books in
print, chiefly crime or romantic suspense stories. In 2013
she released a book called Cold which has now been re-
released as FOLLY. This is set in the Cotswolds, a
picturesque hilly area near London and Oxford, in modern
day.
The village of Folly-on-Weir is bitterly cold this winter,
but Alex Bailey-Jones who bought the Black Dog Inn after
her marriage broke down, is content - until a whining dog
leads her to its dead owner. Strangely the man lying in
the
snow has a dart stuck in his neck just like those used for
the pub's dartboard. After the police leave, a local man
named Tony hopes to comfort Alex, but Heather and Leonard
the big landowners arrive with the same idea. They didn't
want to know her when she crept here as an impecunious
divorcee. Not long after everyone leaves, Alex finds that
a
prowler has slashed her Land Rover's tyres. What is going
on?
The atmosphere is skilfully built with the villagers
becoming interested in the murder and turning up to drink
Guinness and play darts. The scruffy little dog Bogie is a
star in his own right while Alex, initially quiet, grows
in
strength and character as she wonders who would want to
kill Brother Dominic. Alex has had a sad past but she is
trying to put that behind her. A scrap of lace however
drags her into a story from someone else's past, a tragedy
perhaps serious enough to incite a killing. I like the
attention to local detail and feeling of realism.
FOLLY is not a long book and sees Alex taking back her
surname of Duggins. This is the first in the Alex
Duggins series by Stella Cameron; I found it a
refreshing
cross between a cosy and a serious crime study, with
police
procedure, security cameras and DNA all entering the fray.
If you like English countryside murder stories this book
may provide your new favourite detecting heroine.
Following the breakdown of her marriage, Alex Duggins has
returned to her picturesque hometown of Folly-on-Weir in
the Cotswolds in order to start afresh. But you can’t
outrun the past, as Alex is about to discover when she
stumbles across a frosted corpse buried in the snow. The
subsequent murder investigation threatens to unearth old
secrets – including Alex’s own.
As Folly-on-Weir braces for a chilling winter and Alex
finds herself top of the police’s suspect list, she
determines to clear her name and find the real murderer.
But as she begins to peel back the layers of deception
that have long-concealed one of the town’s darkest
secrets, she herself becomes the target of a ruthless
killer who has nothing left to lose. Will Alex be the next
snow-covered body to be found in the beautiful hills above
the town? .