Rack, Ruin and Murder by Ann Granger

When old Monty Bickerstaffe staggers home on his wonky legs after an alcoholic visit to the local Cotswold market town, he opens the door to his dilapidated farmhouse to find a body of a well dressed man on the sofa.

So begins the second Campbell and Carter yarn in Ann Granger’s newest series of crime novels. It does not take the police long to discover that all signs of identification have been removed from the body. The man was unknown to Monty, who lived on the ground floor of his large and decaying home. When police search the house they find an upstairs bedroom in a tidy and immaculate state — unlike everywhere else in the building.

They guess that the room has been used for illicit assignations when Monty is away on his regular drinking trips. But they wonder if there is a link between the corpse and the bedroom.

And to complicate matters, everyone interviewed about the murder denies all knowledge of any wrongdoing.

Things begin to move for the police when Tom, the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem, recognises the dead man in a photo in the society pages of a glossy magazine he read in a dentist’s waiting room.

And soon Det Insp Jess Campbell and her boss Det Supt Ian Carter realise there is a web of family secrets surrounding both the murder and the bedroom. While there is a false confession to the murder, it is not until the final pages that the mystery is resolved.

Fans of Granger’s earlier Mitchell and Markby series will not be disappointed with the crimes put before Campbell and Carter.

And as in the M and M series, Granger does not overload her protaganists too early with a heavily worked-out background. She lets drop hints here and there as the crimes turn up on Campbell and Carter’s patch in the Cotswolds. Rack, Ruin and Murder is just right as a good read for the beach. Better still, take along their first outing, Mud, Muck and Dead Things as well.

Ann Granger will be at the Witney Book Festival tomorrow at 2pm (for details, see www.witneybookfestival.wordpress.com).