The Detective's Daughter

Seven cryptic photographs. A decades-old case. Can one woman find a killer? Before his death, Terry Darnell was a famous detective. His daughter Stella, a cleaner, has inherited his methodical mind. She has also inherited a strange case file: seven photographs of empty streets. Why did her father keep them for so many years? One photo dates from 1966, to a day when a young girl witnessed something that would haunt her forever.

A man has jumped in front of a late night train. Stella Darnell, a cleaner who solves crimes, suspects it's murder. Now she's stirring up the past with questions that no one wants to answer. Jack Harmon, a driver on the Tube, has a new home at the top of an old water tower, with a perfect bird's eye view of London.

The summer of 1976 was the hottest in living memory. A lost little girl, dizzied by the heat, stumbled upon a deserted museum. She thought she saw a woman lying dead on the ground. But when she opened her eyes, the woman had gone. Forty years later, cleaner and detective Stella Darnell is investigating a suspected murder in the Botanical Gardens at Kew.

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.

January, 1987. In the depths of winter, only joggers and dog walkers brave the Thames towpath after dark. Helen Honeysett, a young newlywed, sets off for an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has asked Stella Darnell, a private detective, and her sidekick Jack Harmon, to find out what happened all those years ago.

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.    

Forty years ago, seventeen-year-old Cassie Baker took a shortcut home from a small Cotswolds village, and was never seen again. Twenty years later, Cotswolds police found Cassie's remains while searching for another missing teenager, Bryony Motson. Bryony's body was never found. Now Stella Darnell, cleaner and private detective, has decided to find out what happened to Bryony. She knows her investigation will be dangerous.

Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous. 

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he, too, is murdered. Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. 

1941. Rupert and Adelaide Stride are raising their two daughters, Clare and Rosa, in the midst of war. When Rupert is called to fight, he dies on the beaches of Dunkirk, leaving his family to fend for themselves. 2023. Decades later, Clare and Rosa have retreated to the annex, trapped in the place where they were raised: Yew Tree House. When the rooms are put up for rent, Jack Harmon sees the perfect spot for a family holiday with his twins and detective Stella Darnell. But then the children discover a skeleton with a hole in its skull hidden in the brambles of a decommissioned WWII pill box.

Bloomsbury presents The Shrine by Lesley Thomson, read by Richard Atlee. 'This is Lesley Thomson at her very best; a wonderfully twisty story told with her customary warmth and brilliant eye for social detail. I loved it.' ELLY GRIFFITHS A decades-old murder. A haunting legacy. A plot for...