The Murders at Fleat House

Another Lucinda Riley legacy to treasure' - Lancashire Post 'A cleverly woven mystery to savour' - Sunday Express The Murders at Fleat House is a suspenseful and utterly compelling crime novel from the author of the multimillion-selling The Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley. The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen's - a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk - is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident. But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz' Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss. Reunited with her loyal sergeant Alistair Miles, she enters the closed world of the school, and as Jazz begins to probe the circumstances surrounding Charlie Cavendish's tragic death, events are soon to take another troubling turn. Charlie is exposed as an arrogant bully, and those around him had both motive and opportunity to switch the drugs he took daily to control his epilepsy. As staff at the school close ranks, the disappearance of young pupil Rory Millar and the death of an elderly classics master provide Jazz with important leads, but are destined to complicate the investigation further. As snow covers the landscape and another suspect goes missing, Jazz must also confront her personal demons . . . Then, a particularly grim discovery at the school makes this the most challenging murder investigation of her career. Because Fleat House hides secrets darker than even Jazz could ever have imagined . . .

Lucinda Riley was born in Ireland in 1965 and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and continue to strike an emotional chord all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, inspiring its own genre. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Italian Bancarella Prize, the Lovely Books Award in Germany and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. She has received the Dutch Platinum Award for sales over 300,000 copies for a single novel in one year multiple times - a prize last won by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter. In collaboration with her son Harry Whittaker, she also devised and wrote the Guardian Angels series of books for children. Though she brought up her four children mostly in Norfolk, England, in 2015 she fulfilled her dream of buying a remote farmhouse in West Cork, Ireland, which she always felt was her spiritual home, and this was where her last five books were written. Lucinda was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and died on 11 June 2021, surrounded by her family.