Pru Parke and Christopher Pearse are planning a wedding. After a long time away from work, they part as Christopher returns to Scotland Yard and Pru accepts a short-term assignment at the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh.
While warmly welcomed by some of the staff, one member who is overseeing Pru's project is being a thorn in her side. He makes scoffing references to her lack of credentials in validating a journal that is reported to be the work of renowned botanist, Archibald Menzies. Each time Pru tries to pin down the director who hired her, he is busy and won't make time for her.
In the meantime, the search for a suitable wedding hall, a caterer, and someone to design her dress, is putting a log of pressure on Pru. The journal is fascinating and Pru is determined to find the truth, all the while wondering why Iain Blackwell isn't doing the work.
When Iain is discovered dead, everyone considers it an accident. When it is learned that he was poisoned, eyes all turn toward Pru. She now has three tasks to accomplish. Pru must finish the validation of the journal, get everything set for the wedding, and find a killer.
The third in the Potting Shed mysteries, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE is a really good read. It starts off with the two lovers making plans and then finding out that life has a way of interfering with those plans. This series just keeps getting better.
Perfect for fans of Laura Childs, Ellery Adams, and Jenn McKinlay, Marty Wingate’s enchanting Potting Shed Mystery series heads to Scotland as Pru Parke plans her wedding . . . all while a vengeful murderer is poised to strike again. After her romantic idyll with the debonair Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse culminates in a marriage proposal, Pru Parke sets about arranging their nuptials while diving into a short-term gig at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. At hand is the authentication of a journal purportedly penned by eighteenth-century botanist and explorer Archibald Menzies. Compared to the chaos of wedding planning, studying the journal is an agreeable task . . . that is, until a search for a missing cat leads to the discovery of a dead body: One of Pru’s colleagues has been conked on the head with a rock and dumped from a bridge into the Water of Leith. Pru can’t help wondering if the murder has something to do with the Menzies diary. Is the killer covering up a forgery? Among the police’s many suspects are a fallen aristocrat turned furniture maker, Pru’s overly solicitous assistant, even Pru herself. Now, in the midst of sheer torture by the likes of flamboyant wedding dress designers and eccentric church organists, Pru must also uncover the work of a sly murderer—unless this bride wants to walk down the aisle in handcuffs.
EXCERPT
Prologue
Three boys in school uniforms, their ties askew now at the end of the day, edged their way over the imaginary line drawn on the pavement by the police constable. “Stay there,” the PC had said only minutes before as he pointed to an invisible spot on the ground. “Don’t come any closer to the bridge.” The boys, none of them more than ten years old, did as they were told.
It was a stone bridge only ten feet above the Water of Leith— not the Forth Road Bridge that connected Edinburgh to the north of Scotland—but it wasn’t the bridge that concerned the PC, it was the soaked corpse that the boys had pulled out of the shallow water.
The PC watched as Detective Sergeant Tamsin Duncan climbed the steps up from the bank below, all the while furiously chewing on her piece of nicotine gum. The gray stones of the bridge matched the bleak sky—a dreich day, he had said to his sergeant when they arrived on the scene, and she had nodded in return.
The boys had stumbled upon the man’s body lying facedown in the water. The ambulance workers, first on the scene, had given way to police forensic specialists. The boys now jostled for a closer look and hoped to claim credit for the discovery. They’d not stopped asking questions since the police arrived.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I knew he was dead, I saw him first.”
“Is there blood? Can we see?”
“Wheesht!” the PC hissed at them.
The boys did as they were told and fell silent, except for the littlest one who was bold enough to complain, “You sound like my granny.”
“It’s your granny we’re waiting for,” Duncan said, “so that she can take you all home.”
Across the road, an older woman sat stiffly upright on a stone bench, cup of tea in hand. “That isn’t their granny, is it?” Duncan asked the PC.
“No, that woman is the one who came across the body first, actually, but the boys were just after her. Someone helped her ring us, and a neighbor gave her tea, and she’s been waiting for us since. She was quite shaken at first, kept saying she was looking for something she lost. As soon as we arrived, we diverted the rest of the schoolchildren, made them walk up to Saxe Coburg and down Hamilton Place.” His eyes shifted back to the body. “How does it look?”
“Head trauma—we’ll take a close look at the steps—could be he slipped. That’s all we have at the moment—so, we’d better get to it.”
The boys had started to squirm again. “Right now, lads,” the PC said, “it’s ice creams for you if you can hold still until your granny arrives.”
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