🌟🌟🌟1/2

Intricate, tightly-plotted mystery yarn with plenty of twists, red herrings, and deliberate misfires guaranteed to keep you shaking your head and guessing.

The first in the “Midlands Crime” series, set in and around Worcestershire, Birmingham and Warwickshire, centering on a crime-fighting squad known as “Heart of England” Police, the story introduces us to DCI Gavin Roscoe, his wife Helen (proud owner of a Queensbridge-upon-Avon based tearoom), as well as his team including his new-and-unproven sergeant DS Sunita Roy, along with eager PC Brett Dawson and the always reliable special investigator DI Tom Vickers.

When Harry Bowers, a local property tycoon in the Village of Norton-Prior in Warwickshire, is reported missing, suspicion falls on his estranged wife and her suspected lover. As the plot unravels, with seemingly little progress made on the original missing-person case, the body count begins to grow, placing DCI Roscoe (who, despite a twenty-nine year police career, acts with somewhat surprising naïveté under pressure) and his team (each of whom repeatedly function as his professional life-line) in serious hot water to solve the crimes and avert a public relations fiasco for their senior officers in this affluent (and now very anxious) village setting.

With all the charm of a deliciously-welcome new episode of Midsomer Murders, this breezy mystery is fun to read, presenting the reader with an entertaining and engaging puzzle, which is challenging, but not impossible to solve.

Will DCI Roscoe save the day and resolve the mystery of the missing Harry Bowers?

Will new-transferee Sunita Roy prove her mettle, earning her keep on this cracker-jack CID team?

And most fun of all – Will the reader fill in the blanks and figure out the “who-dunnit”?

My stop today on the @rararesources #blogtour for #murderinOxfordLane by @tonyBasset.

Thank you to the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.