Death At The White Hart by Chris ChibnallMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jim Tiernan, landlord of the White Hart pub, has been found dead, his body tied to a chair with stag's antlers attached to his head in the middle of an isolated country road.
Nicola Bridge has just moved back to her childhood home of Fleetcombe in Dorset from Liverpool, where she was a high-flying police detective, with her husband and teenage son. She was expecting life to be a bit lower key than a big city so she is shocked to find her first case is a macabre murder. Also the post she was sold/wooed with turns out to have been significantly embellished, her 'Police Station' is in a former bank and she has two staff, Mel who appears to never leave the station and Max an over-eager green trainee detective.
It seems as though there is no shortage of suspects. Jim appears to have been a serial philanderer, he was in trouble with the brewery for allegedly skimming money from the till, there was intense rivalry for trade between The White Hart and the only other pub in the village. Add in all the other inhabitants who are downright lying about their whereabouts on the night in question or not telling the whole truth and Nicola has a lot on her hands. Is this murder linked to a similar series of murders back in the 1920s - back then they hanged a man for the murders but his family always protested his innocence? The truth may hinge on what a young girl saw when she was hiding in the playground late at night.
When I saw the author created Broadchurch and the book was praise by Gillian McAllister (love her books) I requested an ARC and I did not regret it. This was engaging, clever, twisty, and although I can say the murderer/motive were a surprise they were also logical and I had had my suspicions along the way.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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