The Stranger's Watch: A Cotswolds Cozy Mystery: 2

A Victorian pocket watch. A stranger from the north. A morning of bells at the wrong hour. Silver remembers. That is the only reason we still use it. When antiques restorer Julian Ashcroft accepts a silver hunter watch from a quiet stranger who walks into his shop one November afternoon, he expects a careful piece of restoration work - a serviced Swiss escapement, a clean white enamel face, a name engraved on the inner case. What he finds instead is a name no one in Thornwick will admit they recognise, a doctor's letter from October 1986, and a memorial held in the village for a woman who, by every careful arrangement, was supposed to stay buried. Eleven days later, the bells of St Margaret's Chapel ring at the wrong hour. The stranger is found inside, killed with a brass candlestick that has been in the village for a hundred and forty years. While DS Harriet Okafor conducts the official enquiry, Julian follows his own thread: through a forged death certificate, a private establishment near Swindon, a Cheltenham GP's surviving correspondence, and a parlour on the green where tea is taken every Wednesday at four o'clock by a woman the village has trusted, without question, for sixty years. But in tracking down the stranger's killer, Julian comes to understand that some villages do not so much hold their secrets as arrange them - and that the arrangement, once disturbed, will be defended. In the seemingly peaceful village of Thornwick, the past has been kept tidy for nearly forty years. Including by the killer. Including, in his own quieter way, by Julian. An atmospheric, character-driven mystery set among the honey-stoned villages of the Cotswolds. The Stranger's Watch is the second book in An Ashcroft Mystery - a literary cozy series for readers of Ann Cleeves, Louise Penny, and Anthony Horowitz. Perfect for fans of: - Slow-burn village mysteries with quiet, intelligent detectives - Atmospheric English settings and antiques - Crime fiction with literary depth and moral complexity - Series where each book stands alone, but a longer story builds beneath Continue the series today.