Murder at the Coffee Morning

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The parish council chair drank her tea. The village crossword setter read the clue she left behind. Top of the milk? Treasurer's been at it for years (8) Marjorie "Midge" Alderton is seventy-nine, a retired village postmistress, and — though almost nobody in Wexham Staithe knows it — the setter of the Saturday cryptic crossword in the local paper. At the village's Macmillan coffee morning, the formidable chair of the parish council stirs a spoon of honey into her peppermint tea and says it has a bite to it. Within the hour she has collapsed. By teatime she is dead. And in her handbag, addressed to Midge's secret crossword name, is a torn notebook page: one clue, and a request to check my working. Somebody in Wexham Staithe has been at it for years. With her lodger the new village GP, her greyhound Biscuit (terrified of pigeons), and a detective sergeant she once sold sherbet lemons to, Midge sets out to solve the last clue a clever woman ever wrote — one handwriting, one flower bed and one coffee morning at a time. • A clean, cosy, fair-play mystery: every clue is on the page before the reveal. • Set in present-day north Norfolk — saltmarsh, tide tables, a village hall and a great deal of cake. • Book one of the Midge Alderton Mysteries. Perfect for readers of Richard Osman, M.C. Beaton and Agatha Christie.