Catching up with Murder

The novel divides itself naturally into three acts. Act I commences with a young woman, Julie Simpson, asking retired Chief Inspector Fred Winter to investigate the death of an aunt found dead in her bath. Once on the case, Winter becomes reacquainted with and attracted to Carol Brady, an old flame. One potential lead after another leads to the same dead end - a village on the south coast called Monks Tallow. Act II takes the reader back twenty years to the 1980's. A young man, Ralph Cotter, a closet homosexual, shoots Carol's Husband. Her toddler son, Liam, witnesses the murder. Cotter runs to his lover, Darren 'Daz' Horton for help. They head for a cottage belonging to Horton's aunt in Monks Tallow and stop to give a lift to a woman whose car has broken down. Shortly afterwards, the car skids and smashes into a tree, killing her. The two men bury the body and Cotter evades capture for years by assuming her identity. Act III follows Winter to Monks Tallow where he slowly pieces together a jigsaw of audacious masquerade and murder. Meanwhile, an adult Liam Brady survives an attempt by Cotter and Horton to kill him but has no memory prior to the event and starts a new life with a pub landlady, Sadie Chapman. Eventually, Winter succeeds in reuniting Carol with the son she believed dead, although in doing so, he places himself and others in grave danger.

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