Dead Tide

The island keeps its secrets. Until a storm makes sure no one can leave. When travel journalist Nora Callahan arrives on Inis Mara for the grand reopening of the Cormorant House Hotel, she expects a quiet weekend and a travel piece. What she gets is a dead body, a locked library, and a ferry grounded by an Atlantic storm. Estelle Briar - formidable widow of the hotel's former owner - is found dead in her favourite room, a glass of Burgundy still on the reading table. The local Garda sergeant rules it a cardiac arrest. But Rachel Thorn, a former pharmacist who knows what grief looks like and what it doesn't, notices the colour of Estelle's lips. And Nora, who notices everything, has already started a list. Trapped on the island with nowhere to go and a killer who knows they are getting close, six unlikely people find themselves at the centre of an investigation no one asked them to run: A journalist who hyperfocuses on exactly the wrong detail at exactly the right moment. An architect haunted by a loss he won't name. A retired detective whose past a local sergeant recognises - and won't forget. A pharmacist in recovery who knows precisely how this was done. An elegant gallery owner who knew the victim and didn't say so. A young barrister still learning when to break the rules. Behind the murder lies a forged will, a stolen inheritance, and a secret that Estelle Briar was about to expose - until someone made sure she never got the chance. Not all of them are what they seem. But then, neither is the island. Dead Tide is the first novel in the Inis Mara Mysteries series - sharp, warm, and impossible to put down, in the tradition of Agatha Christie and Richard Osman.