The Ninth Place: A Mystery

Nine guests. One weekend. Only eight will leave with the truth intact.When the invitations arrive for a reunion at Alderleigh Manor, nobody suspects it's anything but an overdue catching-up among old friends. The storm rolls in before dinner is served. By midnight, the phone lines are dead, the roads are flooded, and the ninth guest - the one nobody remembers inviting - is found in the library with a glass of poisoned port still warm in his hand.Now the manor's oldest secrets are the only clues anyone has. Every guest arrived with a reason to want him gone, and every alibi collapses under a little polite pressure. The amateur sleuth trapped in the house with them has one stormy night and a locked front gate to work out which of her old friends is capable of murder - before the killer decides one confession isn't enough.This is a classic fair-play whodunit for readers who love working the puzzle alongside the detective: a country house setting steeped in atmosphere, a tight cast of suspects who all had motive and opportunity, and a mystery built to be solved, clue by clue, before the final reveal. No car chases, no explicit violence - just an old-fashioned, ingeniously plotted mystery in the tradition of the genre's classics.If you love isolated house mysteries, storm-trapped suspects, and a detective who notices the one detail everyone else missed, The Ninth Place will keep you turning pages until the last name is finally, unmistakably, the right one. Standalone and self-contained, it's the perfect pick for anyone who wants a satisfying, old-fashioned mystery they can finish in a single sitting - assuming they can bear to put it down long enough to sleep.