Yembury is an attractive Dorset village which would catch more than a second glance from a visitor, but beneath the seemingly placid surface all is not well. Well-to-do new-comers have purchased all the “character” homes in the neighbourhood and have taken over the running of village affairs The natives find themsleves marginalised and resentful.A pop music festival sponsored by the new owner of the manor proves to be the spark that ignites hostilities. Over a weekend there is a “peasant’s revolt”, a guillotine on the village green, two murders, of which one is unsolved and the other results in the conviction of an innocent man.Does Yembury return to normal? Is justice finally done? All may depend on a young but tenacious Woman Police Detective, Joyce Agate, to find a solution to the Yem-bury murders.
Readers of A Patch of Nettles will welcome this second adventure in the fictional Dorset village of Yembury, a socially divided village where tensions often run high. New characters join the village and some of the survivors from the first novel take centre stage. The sexual adventurer India Flynt-Harbidge reappears and her casual adultery contrasts with two genuine love affairs in this story.Another unpredictable murder baffles the local police. Will they solve the crime? Will the murderer escape prosecution? Read on to discover the answer in this blackly humorous novel of English country life.
“What is it about Yembury?” wonders Joyce Agate, now a detective sergeant, as she tries to solve yet another murder in Yembury.In this third excursion into the apparently cosy Dorset village of Yembury, Geoffrey Lloyd takes us deeper into the geteel and not so genteel lives of Yembury’s inhabitants, and their apparent propensity for leaving dead bodies around the village. Some characters from the two previous novels reappear and some new residents make their introductions. Again the mixture of new and old, rich and poor, country and city, aggressive and passive, combine to conjure new tensions in Yembury.The author continues to sprinkle moments of black humour and social comment in this entertaining murder mystery – perhaps another insoluble crime.
It is just before Christmas. An abandoned baby is found in the woods; another newborn infant is snatched from its pram. Here is another challenge for the woman police detective Joyce Agate. Neither case is easily solved. In the background, the usual assortment of Yembury folk struggle with their families and their social relationships, until, at the end of the Christmas season, Yembury once more returns to some normality.This is the fourth novel in the Yembury crime series set in a fictional Dorset village, where the affluent and the less well-off uneasily co-exist with comic and sometimes tragic outcomes.
When the police investigate the embers of a bonfire on Clunch Hill they discover a charred body. It appears to be that of a local author who has immolated himself using all his unpublished manuscripts to fuel the flames. It appears to be a shocking suicide.Mysteriously, any legacy his son and daughters were expecting has vanished and his house has been sold. The author’s favourite grandson, an aspiring writer himself, receives a letter with instructions about what to do with his grandfather’s digital files. So equipped he heads for London to make his name.The police see this as a simple case and wish to close the file, but Joyce Agate, now an inspector, has some nagging doubts and pursues the matter in her own time.Intrigue now centres on the world of publishing as the manuscripts of the dead author become best sellers and a manuscript purporting to be a true account of the death of Princess Diana comes to light. Fatal accidents seem to follow this manuscript and Joyce Agate is faced with another challenging mystery.Geoffrey Lloyd once again skilfully interlaces character and plot in another novel which shows a less-than-tranquil side to Dorset life.
Inspector Joyce Agate, exiled to Australia after her investigations touch uncomfortably on informationrelating to the death of Princess Diana, is now married to Patrick MacNamara, a farmer and former journalist. When he learns of her account he takes up the investigative trail and before long theyareback in England asking more questions that the authorities don’t want answered.In this thrilling story, set in England and Australia, they and some of the survivors of the previous novel Flames, find their lives and liberty under threat while the Inquest into the death of Princess Diana runs its course.This is the sixth novel in the Yembury crime series set in a fictional Dorset village.
The seventh novel in this series returns the former police inspector, Joyce MacNamara, to the Dorset village of Yembury, where she made her reputation many years before by solving a series of murders.As before, this seemingly tranquil rural haven is not immune to further crime – and murder.
Yembury has a new resident – a retired judge who has scarcely settled into his retirement before he re-opens investigations into the murder cases he considers to be unsolved. Old wounds are re-opened and there are more deaths to puzzle over before peace is once more restored to Yembury.This is the eighth novel in the Yembury crime series set in a fictional Dorset village.