Book excerpt: 'A gifted and knowledgeable writer . . . engaging and readable' Financial Times Women in the quiet Cotswold town of Stowbridge are living in fear of a sex strangler. At the same time, surrounding villages are suffering a spate of burglaries, one of which leads to the death of Gloucestershire's most prolific novelist, Leonora Jewell. Crime writer Melissa Craig is persuaded to complete Jewell's unfinished novel and soon suspects that the author's death was not, as was first supposed, accidental. Clues in the script suggest a motive for murder. But as the intrepid writer pieces together the clues - and stumbles across yet another planned twist in Leonora's novel - so the mystery of Stowbridge's crime-wave deepens.