Mitchell & Markby

When Meredith Mitchell agreed to stay with her actress cousin, Eve, in the run up to Eve's daughter's wedding, she anticipated a degree of drama. But she can hardly have expected it to include murder, blackmail, and unrequited love. Or to involve a certain Chief Inspector Markby, a middle aged divorcee.

It is with some trepiditation that Meredith Mitchell returns to the Cotswolds: the Bamford district holds memories that, to put it generously, are bittersweet, and Christmas is a difficult time to find oneself a stranger in a new area. Yet she receives a kindly welcome, in particular from her old acquaintance Chief Inspector Markby and from her new neighbour Harriet Needham, a striking redhead with whom Meredith immediately feels a certain kinship. But Meredith has barely got to know her neighbour when Harriet is involved in a shocking—and fatal—accident at the Boxing Day Hunt.

It doesn't take Meredith Mitchell long to regret giving up her lovely Cotswold cottage in favour of living in London. In addition, the fact that her job gives a whole new meaning to the word "tedious" does little to improve her mood. What she needs is a holiday. So, when Alan Markby's sister wants a house-sitter, Meredith jumps at the chance. Alan himself is overloaded with work following the discovery of two bodies, one of which, at least, is a murder victim.

When a hotelier announces that he will be converting Springwood Hall into a smart country hotel, his plan is greeted with a chorus of local disapproval, led by the fearsome Hope Mapple, head of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Bamford. So the grand opening, to which all are invited, promises to be a lively affair, particularly since Hope is planning a disruptive protest "streak". However, Hope is to be unwittingly upstaged by the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises.

In the heart of the Cotswolds, a body is found, that of a teenage girl, probably local - somebody's daughter who went out one evening and didn't come back. It's not long before she is identified: 15-year-old Lynne Wills, a habitual, underage drinker at The Silver Bells pub who, on the night of her death, was seen leaving with an unknown man.

When Meredith Mitchell bumps into her old school friend Rachel Hunter at the Chelsea Flower Show, she is shocked to discover that she was the first wife of her companion, Chief Inspector Alan Markby. But the meeting is not the only surprise; before the afternoon is out, Markby has a death on his hands.

Meredith and Markby are almost ready to leave on a long planned canal barge trip, but Meredith is having reservations. Then the 12-year-old corpse of a missing teenage girl is dug up in the local graveyard. The vacation is off (to Meredith's relief), but the investigation is on.

The two elderly sisters of the Oakley family live in poverty in an ancient mansion and have decided to sell up to live comfortably from the profits. However, things become more complicated when a young Polish man appears claiming rights to half the fortune. When he dies in circumstances familiar to the Oakley family, the sisters are haunted by the shadow of crime, and Superintendent Markby must look back at the events of a century ago to find the killer.

It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled across human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds. Twenty-two years earlier, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure, in the hunt for a brutal serial rapist preying on local women. After the third rape, the attacker went to ground, never to be heard of again.

When Meredith Mitchell's old friend, Toby Smythe, turns up on leave, she is delighted to see him. But Toby has a problem - or rather his relative, Alison Jenner, has - and he wants to enlist the help of Meredith's fiancé, Detective Superintendent Alan Markby.

Superintendent Alan Markby and his wife, Meredith, have retired for the night when they are disturbed by a visitor. It's not the first time someone has called at the Old Vicarage in search of a priest, but in this case, having just found a dead body in the churchyard, Callum Henderson needs the police. Accompanying Callum to the graveyard, Alan declares that this has all the hallmarks of a murder scene.