The Clerk's Writing Desk: A Cotswolds Cozy Mystery: 1

A hidden compartment. Thirty blackmail letters. A young man dead in an abandoned garden.Every object carries its history in its grain.When antiques restorer Julian Ashcroft buys the writing desk of a recently deceased country solicitor, he expects two seasons of careful work - walnut veneer, original brass, a cracked leather inlay. What he finds instead is a hidden compartment, thirty years of meticulous blackmail letters, and a signature from a past he thought he had left behind in London.Forty-eight hours later, Thomas Elham-Whitmore - twenty-eight years old, asking quiet questions about his family's history - is found dead in the walled kitchen garden of an abandoned Cotswold hall. Killed, by all appearances, for what he was about to expose.While DS Harriet Okafor conducts the official enquiry, Julian follows his own thread: through a dead solicitor's records, a falsified 1974 land transfer, a listed building missing from a planning application, and three men who each had reason to want Thomas silenced.But in tracking down Thomas's killer, Julian risks uncovering a truth about himself that he has spent eight years burying.In the seemingly peaceful village of Thornwick, everyone has something to hide.Including the killer. Including Julian. An atmospheric, character-driven mystery set among the honey-stoned villages of the Cotswolds. The Clerk's Writing Desk is the first book in An Ashcroft Mystery - a new literary cozy series for readers of Ann Cleeves, Louise Penny, and Anthony Horowitz.Perfect for fans of: - Slow-burn village mysteries with quiet, intelligent detectives- Atmospheric English settings and antiques- Crime fiction with literary depth and moral complexity- Series where each book stands alone, but a longer story builds beneathBegin the series today.