DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . .
Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer's House; a country retreat where aspiring authors work on their stories. Things get complicated when a body is discovered, and Vera's neighbour is found with a knife in her hand.
Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She's too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting, and she's never been one to follow the rules.
There seems to be no motive. When another body is found, Vera suspects that someone is playing games with her. Somewhere there is a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real.
***
Vera Stanhope climbed out of Hector's ancient Land Rover and felt the inevitable strain on her knees. CHAPTER 1
***
(@panmacmillan, 2 February 2012, 401 pages, ebook, bought from @AmazonKindle)
***
***
I'm a huge fan of the author and of the Vera books and TV series. I still have a few to read. I had to have this when I saw it on sale for 99p, a bargain to me. I really enjoyed this. This case is more personal than other ones as Vera's hippie neighbours are in the middle of it with Joanne being one witnesses of a strange murder at a writer's retreat. Jo thinks she has a conflict of interest but Vera is having none of it. In her usual, stubborn way she's determined to find the killer and their motive as the murder seems staged and matches a murder scene in one of the writer's books. She's even more determined when the killer strikes again after everyone leaves the retreat and returns home.