The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox: Winner of the Richard & Judy Search for a Bestseller Competition
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By Claire Gradidge
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Agatha Christie meets The Mitford Murders in this deliciously dark golden age mystery of wartime family secrets and lies in small town England.
DON’T MISS THE LASTEST JOSEPHINE FOX MYSTERY, A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS. OUT NOW!
April 1941, Romsey, England.
Josephine ‘Jo’ Fox hasn’t set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family – headed by her controlling grandfather – found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him?
Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit. They are shocked, however, to uncover eight bodies instead. The eighth, unidentified, body is that of a teenage girl, who no one in the town claims to know. Who is she, how did she get there, but most importantly – who killed her?
Teaming up with local coroner and old friend, Bram Nash, Jo sets out to establish the identity of the girl and solve the riddle of her death. In doing so, she also uncovers her own personal mystery.
Everyone has secrets – some are just more deadly than others . . .
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Set in Romsey, Hampshire, in 1941 this was billed as a mix of Agatha Christie and Midsomer Murders. A pub has been destroyed by a German bomb. Seven people were known to have been in there when it was hit but when the lifting team starts to dig, eight bodies are discovered. The ‘extra’ body is that of a 15-year old girl, dressed in her finest red dress, dead from a blow to the head but with no blast injuries. To the disgust of the town’s establishment the local coroner and solicitor, Bram Nash, refuses to sign her off as a bomb casualty. A friend of Bram’s, Josephine Cox, has recently returned to the town and she starts to investigate to discover who the dead girl might be. In doing so she discovers the girl had recently had a child, and with her questions she manages to stir up a hornet’s nest of depravity and malice. The case is eventually solved and although the perpetrator of the crime was fairly obvious from the start it is the unpicking of the clues which makes this book so readable. The story is well told and the social strands of the town are well described. This is Clare Gradidge’s debut novel and certainly earns 4 Stars.
Review by: Freyja
