Vroege RecensentenCary Smith

Detective Inspector Inga Larsson is one of the first on the scene of the death of a local woman discovered at home in Lincoln by her ten-year-old daughter.

The victim, Alyson Allsop, had taken out a series of injunctions in spiteful attempts to stop her ex-husband from having any contact with their daughter.

Is murder by the husband too obvious, too simplistic?

As if all that is not enough to contend with, it is pointed out to Larsson how the local media have suddenly highlighted the anniversary of the unsolved murder of disabled student Donna Steyning, strangled back in 2010.

The morning news on the radio is for many a critical start to their day. Unfortunately, the latest about the Covid-19 pandemic, boring politics and tales of wars, floods, and earthquakes in some hell hole all tend to get in the way of really vital news. Not important to the vast majority often, but that day it was to one man in particular. The news he was waiting for? He killed this vile woman the previous evening. Not an accident, you understand. Not a road traffic shunt due to him being drunk. He’d not got all drugged-up and shanked the bitch down some dark alley like some scumbags do, because she was in the wrong post code.

Jacqueline Epton-Howe had heard of an unexplained death on the radio forty miles away as she prepared breakfast. "My story will most certainly be warts and all," she says. "Because that it is exactly how you'll find me and I make no excuses. I'm quite sure the modern thought police and other outraged sensitive souls will find fault with my intelligent yet less than politically correct terminology. If that is the case I'm afraid you'll have to like it or lump it. If this book is not your kettle of fish at all, you can always hand it in to a charity shop or chuck it in the recycle bin." Amber Coetzer had returned home to make an appalling discovery. A few years after her husband had been tragically killed in an accident at work she walked in to find the body of her only child Graeme.

Detective Inspector Inga Larsson is enjoying a spot of retail therapy, sipping a cappuccino, and relaxing on a bright Sunday morning in Lincoln when her idyll is shattered by an alert to attend a major incident. She quickly discovers what started off as a simple suspicious death is, in fact, murder. As she delves deeper into the circumstances surrounding the young woman's death and the events leading up to it, she realizes the Gubber family has been hiding secrets for generations. There are torrid lies hidden beneath the benign appearance of Martha and Esther, the successful sisters. Inga is aware other people are lying to her and her team and there is a nasty undercurrent of bad practice, illicit trading, theft, and corruption, into which she must dig deep to uncover the truth. To make matters worse, her young assistant stumbles upon an extraordinary family twist known to only two living people. After this, visiting a farm shop will never quite be the same again! Lincolnshire Murder Mystery No 7

Blonde Swedish born DI Inga Larsson stood in the barn that chilly morning looking down at the body of the poor young wretch. It may very well now be a world of phones that are often too smart, of Beats headphones and Android mobiles, of kissy-kissy greetings and social media the great British public get fussed about. But in some aspects life has not changed one iota. Being dead is still as dead as it has always been. Two squabbling factions quickly come to the attention of Larsson and her team – not the usual moody gatherings of hooded hoodlums or scurrilous drug gangs intent on causing mayhem and ruining lives. These two outfits are Lincoln’s amateur dramatic groups both full to overflowing with a whole array of odd balls, antagonistic miscreants and eccentrics who it appears refuse to see eye to eye. As Larsson digs deeper she comes face to face with the twin peaks of last century homophobic and racist attitudes with unadulterated snootiness served as a side dish. Then right out of the blue up pops one of the am-dram crew to hit the national news headlines for all the wrong reasons. Has this innocent poor young woman become unwittingly embroiled in their shoddy dispute in the name of art and paid the price with her life? As Shakespeare put it himself – Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. Lincolnshire Murder Mystery No 5

Harry Rusper, a trader in other people's discarded golden trinkets, has been discovered dead by his wife in their kitchen just outside Lincoln, with a claw hammer embedded in his skull. At the same time in the cathedral city, Harry's younger brother has had his home ransacked while he dined out in a local restaurant. Is the timing sheer coincidence or had Danny been at home would the same fate have come knocking on his door? Swedish born Di Inga Larsson realised right from the outset that this wasn't a run-of-the-mill domestic gone badly wrong. She knew for certain that this Harry Rusper was just as dead as any other murder victim, but with gold as a defining issue. Inga had to consider that this could very well be a case of both brothers being made to pay the price for Harry's brash dealing indiscretions. Her hunt for the killer and the truth will lead Inga down a road she could never have imagined. A road that will unleash a secret which, if revealed, would make headlines across the world.