Julia Ford lives in Somerset, England, in the town of Biddle Rhyne. By the time of MURDER ON A SPRING DAY she has solved two previous Somerset Whodunit Mysteries, along with her ever-patient boyfriend, Mark Jones. I was meeting the pair for the first time, and this book serves well as a standalone. The town is village-like in feel, with only two pubs, one of which is in danger of closing, and one bookshop, in a similar state.

Julia is hoping for a customer who buys books rather than browses, when Ronald Cutty, a local accountant, enters. He asks her for help, instead. One of his employees, Beatrice Campbell, had a dispute with him and left the office, and later was found dead in her home after phoning the emergency services. Beatrice’s smart doorbell had taken a photo of any callers, one of whom was her boss. As it turns out, Beatrice had been quietly embezzling some clients’ money, so Ronald Cutty asks Julia to look into their motives while the police make enquiries into him. 

I have to say I laughed a few times while reading. The predicaments of the couple are light enough and silly enough, if not always foreseeable, while a sideline into baking for the village fair’s bake-off makes the bookshop momentarily popular for recipe books. Julia and Mark are not licensed PIs – Mark is a house painter – yet they claim to be investigators, sometimes believed, sometimes not. Mark’s father is a senior police officer who warns the couple off getting involved, thinking they’ll accidentally ruin any evidence. The strangest aspect is that there is no reason why Julia should look into the ghastly crime. She’s not getting a fee. She’s not helping a relative. Ending violence against women barely passes through her mind – I think she’d feel more strongly about this if the character had been written by a female author. Julia just wants to help a man she barely knows, who may be innocent, though it looks quite likely he is the culprit.

I like the springtime feel, with cow parsley in the hedges, the town social life picking up, and hikers getting muddy. The writing style is conversational, almost as if narrated by the author, Jon Harris, bringing the setting to life. The third of the Somerset Whodunit Mysteries MURDER ON A SPRING DAY will pass the time pleasantly for readers while involving a few modern investigation techniques. We’re also subtly asked how often we patronise physical bookshops and country pubs if we want them to keep serving the public.