Murder on The Ordinary Express - The Curious Case of The Butcher of St Mary Nook

When her uncle-in-law is charged with murder, probationary police officer Heather Prendergast, goes undercover in the sleepy village where she grew up and uncovers a viper's nest of fraud, bigotry, deceit . . . and the marauding hand of a ruthless seial killer.

Take a dollop of Agatha Christie, stir in a Morse-alike Detective Inspector, a sprinkling of Lewis Carroll, a dusting of PG Wodehouse, a pinch of wry humour, a murder in a bigoted Kentish village, an ambitious rookie detective with a Sherlock Holmes obsession and you have the headscratch of all whodunits.

Ambitious young police officer, Heather Prendergast, is summoned by her celebrity Aunt, Lady Elizabeth Trevelyan, when her uncle-in-law, Montague Locke-Mortice, is accused of murder. Returning to St Mary Nook, the Kentish village where she grew up, Heather is faced with what looks like an open and shut case. Locke-Mortice was found leaning over the corpse of Canadian journalist, Trevor Mathers, holding a bloody knife in the first class compartment of the commuter train from London. A high ranking civil servant and chair of the National Security Council, he vociferously protests his innocence and points the finger of guilt at one of the other passengers in the compartment – local farmer and businessman, Colonel Hamilton Dangerfield, the local vicar, Reverend William Bragg, and incendiary newspaper columnist, Elouise Decora.
All may have had opportunity, but who had motive? The plot thickens when one by one the potential witnesses are murdered, suggesting that a serial killer is at large.