'COSY CRIME AT ITS FINEST!' JANICE HALLETT

Alice has made the most of her maternity leave, becoming simultaneously a proud mum (well, a mum, at least) and accidental amateur sleuth. With her son, Jack, fast approaching his first birthday, she is keen to continue to keep him alive and maybe finally catch up on some sleep ... if she's lucky. When an opportunity presents itself in the unexpected form of a sit-in protest, Alice and her friends willingly chain themselves to trees and settle in for some overdue rest - not the most comfortable arrangement ever, but at this point they'll take what they can get.

But the next morning one of their fellow protestors is found strangled and any hope of a blissful interlude is suddenly swept away on a tide of adult hysteria involving rogue artists, an enigmatic local entrepreneur and nude protesting (optional) - a surprising, but not necessarily unwelcome, break from changing nappies and cleaning Weetabix off the dog. For Alice, whose success rate in solving countryside murder is at an all-time high (one out of one), she cannot resist the chance to demonstrate her detectoring skills once more and assembles her gang of young mums to investigate this latest countryside mystery.

'AILES ONCE AGAIN MARRIES QUICK WIT, SURPRISING REVEALS, AND CHARMING ANTICS' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY