The Midge Alderton Mysteries

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.

Inside is a letter from Frank Rix, the old hall caretaker, who left the village in disgrace that winter, accused of stealing the prize money. It says the Show's winning Christmas cakes were baked in the judge's own bakery.

The judge is still judging. And on Show day she means to stand up at the prize-giving and tell the whole village the truth. At half past twelve she is found dead at the foot of a loft ladder she could never have climbed, and somebody has moved the winner's rosette.

With her lodger the village GP, her pigeon-fearing greyhound Biscuit, and a detective sergeant who has started coming round for coffee on Saturdays, Midge follows a trail of gold-headed pins, frost on a windscreen, a holly leaf with one berry too many, and a twenty-eight-year-old bank slip, to put right a wrong she should have questioned long ago.

• A clean, cosy, fair-play mystery set in present-day north Norfolk in the run-up to Christmas. • No sex, no swearing, and the death happens off the page. • Book two of the Midge Alderton Mysteries; reads on its own.

Dennis Wragg, tower captain and for thirty-six years the village postman, brings the puzzle to Midge Alderton, seventy-nine, retired postmistress and secret setter of the Saturday cryptic crossword, who remembers that afternoon because the bells were ringing for her fortieth birthday. Dennis means to find out who really rang the fourth, and to give that man the chance to explain himself.

A week later, on a still Saturday night, Midge hears somebody raise the tenor bell, evenly and beautifully, in four minutes flat. In the morning Dennis is found dead beneath its rope, and it looks like an accident. But Dennis couldn't raise that bell any more, and there is almost nobody in the village who could.

With her lodger the village GP, who has just taken up ringing, her pigeon-fearing greyhound Biscuit, and a detective sergeant who comes round for lemon cake on Saturdays, Midge follows a barking spaniel, a church clock that loses four minutes a week, a sympathy card with crossed sevens, and a purple and gold bell rope back to a quay in the dark in 1987.

• A clean, cosy, fair-play mystery set in present-day north Norfolk in a February of frost and bells. • No sex, no swearing, and the death happens off the page. • Book three of the Midge Alderton Mysteries; reads on its own.

The envelopes turn out to be a kindness from somebody who can hardly write. But Gideon is building a case of his own, about a famous rare bird, a television naturalist and a record his late father never believed. He promises to tell Midge all about it after the committee meets.

On a Friday evening in April, the day after he read Midge his high tide from his own little booklet, Gideon goes out alone to mend a plank across Garnet Creek, and the sea comes in behind him. Everybody says the marsh took him. Midge remembers the time he read out, and does the sum.

With her lodger the village GP, her pigeon-fearing greyhound Biscuit and a detective sergeant who would like one quiet spring, Midge follows a page with no ticks on it, a heap of coats at a bird-club talk, a pale patch of mud in a famous photograph, and a pencil note she wrote in the margin of a post-office ledger twenty-nine years ago.

• A clean, cosy, fair-play mystery set on the present-day north Norfolk coast in an April of spring tides. • No sex, no swearing, and the death happens off the page. • Book four of the Midge Alderton Mysteries; reads on its own.

So this year there is a new Father Christmas. Max Tovell is a careful retired bank manager and the fair's new treasurer, and he has been counting fifteen years of raffle stubs. Each one carries Midge's old post office date stamp. The money doesn't add up, and four prize winners don't seem to exist.

On the day of the Christmas fair, between one child and the next, Father Christmas takes a nip of mulled wine from his flask and dies in the vicarage chair. Everybody says it was his heart. Midge remembers a dent in a flask, a bay leaf that wasn't, and a winning ticket stamped with three letters where her stamp only ever printed two.

With her lodger the village GP, her greyhound Biscuit and a detective sergeant who would like one quiet Christmas, Midge follows a raffle drum, fifteen years of parish magazines, a wreath the size of a bicycle wheel, and a crossword clue meant for one reader only. It all leads to a brazier in the churchyard on Christmas Eve.

• A clean, cosy, fair-play mystery set in a present-day north Norfolk village from May to Christmas. • No sex, no swearing, and the death happens off the page. • The fifth and final Midge Alderton Mystery; reads on its own.