The Bell Tower Murder

Christmas Eve in the Blackmore Vale. Church bells should be ringing across the frosted countryside, calling the faithful to midnight mass. But at St. Mary's Brambledene, the bells are silent.

When Detective Chief Inspector Rhys Morgan and his young partner DC Ben Carter discover blackmailer Oliver Heathcote suspended in the bell ropes, the case seems straightforward enough. A tragic accident, perhaps. A suicide, at worst.

Until they try to leave the locked ringing chamber.

The door is bolted from the inside. The windows are too high and too small. The tower is ancient stone, solid and unforgiving. Yet somehow, impossibly, the killer has vanished-leaving behind a body that defies explanation and a church full of secrets.

As Rhys and Ben dig deeper into the victim's life, they uncover a web of blackmail touching everyone from decorated war veterans to respected farmers. Each suspect had motive. Each had opportunity. And each swears they're innocent.

But the bells didn't ring that night. Someone muffled them. Someone who knew the church intimately. Someone the community has trusted for twenty years.

In a close-knit valley where everyone knows everyone's business, some secrets are still worth killing for. And the tower captain's greatest secret is locked away in stone and silence-until Rhys Morgan discovers that even the most impossible crimes have a solution.

A clever locked-room mystery in the tradition of classic British crime fiction, The Bell Tower Murder introduces DCI Rhys Morgan and DC Ben Carter in the first of The Blackmore Vale Mysteries.