Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from Joffe Books via #netgalley, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own
Detective Norman is out of retirement and back on the beat in a rainy Welsh seaside town. Llangwelli might be short on sunshine, but it’s certainly not short on murders . . . Norman may seem a bit old-fashioned, but he’s always willing to learn from his band of misfit recruits.
It's DC Judy Lane who takes the call. ‘We’ve got a body. It’s at a house called Forge Cottage, on the Old Llangwelli Road.’
The elderly victim is found propped up in his own back garden, a chain wrapped tightly around his chest.
The only clues to what happened are a glass of red wine, a Chinese takeaway receipt – and a missing delivery driver.
Before Detective Norman can pull the pieces together, the wife of a prominent local businessman disappears.
And a second body is discovered in a seafront hotel.
Two dead bodies and a missing person: there’s something very nasty going on in this quiet little seaside town. It’s up to Detective Norman to uncover the truth before events turn even darker.
Review:
Once again, Norman and his team have a scene that doesn't make sense, and the more they dig into the identity of the victim, the more confusing it gets. Then a missing person that doesn't seem to have any link to the dead body, or does it? As the crew thinks they might have the clues they need, the second body occurs and changes everything they thought. meanwhile Lane is fighting battles unbeknownst to the team, as changes are happening, and it's more than just the temporary Chief over their department. Fans will enjoy this latest book in the series (this is Book 8), and newcomers will be intrigued with a tight mystery!
About the Author:
Having spent most of his life trying to be the person everyone else wanted him to be, P.F. (Peter) Ford was a late starter when it came to writing. Having tried many years ago (before the advent of self-published ebooks) and been turned down by every publisher he approached, it was a case of being told ‘now will you accept you can’t write, and get back to work’. But then a few years ago, having been unhappy for over 50 years, Peter decided he had no intention of carrying on that way.
Fast forward a few years and you find a man transformed. Having found a partner, Mary, who believes dreamers should be encouraged and not denied, Peter wrote his first novella series in 2013. Called the Alfie Bowman Novellas, one story in this series needed a detective, and along came a character called Dave Slater. In 2014 Peter and Mary moved to Wales and married, and Slater’s first outing was published. The rest, as they say, is history!
In his first novel, Death of A Temptress, Slater was joined by new colleague Norman Norman. This first book spawned the popular Slater & Norman Mystery series which celebrated the release of its fourteenth and final book in March 2019.
A Body on The Beach launched a new “Rejoiner” series in 2020, followed by two more books in 2021 and 2022. Then in November 2022 Joffe Books republished these three books under the new series name “The West Wales Murder Mysteries”. The series currently (Mar 2026) consists of eight books with number nine to come.
Future projects include more Nolan Cormac, more Donald & Gamble, and the intriguing possibility of the return of one or two characters from the very beginning.
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