In Prior's Wood

“G. M. Malliet has crafted the English village of our dreams.” —Charlaine Harris

Agatha Award-winning author G. M. Malliet has charmed mystery lovers, cozy fans, and Agatha Christie devotees with her critically acclaimed mysteries, and this newest one featuring handsome spy-turned-cleric Max Tudor won’t disappoint.

Newly returned from investigating a murder in Monkslip-super-Mare, handsome Max Tudor wants nothing more than to settle back into his predictable routine as vicar of St. Edwold’s Church in the village of Nether Monkslip. But the flow of his sermon on Bathsheba is interrupted when the lady of the local manor house is found in a suicide pact with her young lover.

Lady Duxter’s husband rallies quickly from the double tragedy—too quickly, it is murmured in the village. Lord Duxter already has offered his manor house to a motley crew of writers, including Max’s wife Awena, for his writers’ retreat, and he insists the show must go on.

When a young girl goes missing and a crime writer becomes a target, DCI Cotton asks Max to lend his MI5 expertise to the investigation.

Many suspects emerge as the scope of the investigation widens beyond the writers to villagers who had crossed swords with the insufferably smug crime author. But Max begins to wonder: was the attack on the writer only part of a broader conspiracy of silence?

G. M. MALLIET’s first St. Just mystery won the 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as a best book of the year. It was nominated for many awards, including the Anthony, the Macavity, and a Left Coast Crime award for best police procedural. Her subsequent mysteries and short stories have been nominated for nearly every major crime-writing award. Critics rave that she "may be the best mystery author writing in English at the moment (along with Tana French). She's certainly the most entertaining...." (Cleveland.com). She and her husband live in the US and travel often to the UK, the setting for all her books.