Showing results by author "T. A. Belshaw" in All Categories

Discover Amy Rowlings: quick-witted movie buff, avid reader of crime fiction, and amateur sleuth. August 1939. For decades, local children have feared Creepy Cottage, a derelict house rumoured to swallow intruders whole. But after a violent summer storm collapses an end wall, the ruins give up a...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 ROMANTIC NOVELISTS' ASSOCIATION ROMANTIC THRILLER AWARD Discover Amy Rowlings: quick-witted movie buff, avid reader of crime fiction, and amateur sleuth. October 1939. With an injury forcing her to take time off work from the Mill, amateur sleuth Amy Rowlings has the...

Discover Amy Rowlings: quick-witted movie buff, avid reader of crime fiction, and amateur sleuth. July 1939. A pleasant afternoon by the river turns tragic when the body of young party girl Effie Watkins is discovered in the reed beds. For an overstretched Inspector Bodkin, it's the worst...

When young Amy Rowlings meets Detective Sergeant Bodkin at the scene of a robbery on the way to work at The Mill, she is blissfully unaware of how much her life is about to change. She is drawn into the murky world of murder when the body of Edward Handsley is found lying on the floor of the factory. Edward, a libertine, philanderer, the son of the factory owner George, a young man with many enemies, many of them female. Bodkin is new to the area and Amy soon becomes an invaluable source of information. But when a family friend, Adam Smethwick, is arrested, Amy sets out to prove his innocence.

May 1939. When Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin are invited to a black-tie civic awards ceremony at the Town Hall, they expect to be met with the usual boring speeches and toe-curling sycophancy, but when the recipient of the night's 'Businessman Of The Year Award', Nelson Kelly, is found stabbed to death after being called from the stage to answer the telephone, the evening begins to liven up. Nelson's company has just won a lucrative contract to build a new armaments factory and many of the town's elite, having backed a rival bidder, aren't happy at missing out.

Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church's lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned. When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.