Scene of Crime [Paperback]

Real-life crime has engulfed the domestic life of the Riverside Theatre players. For starters, there’s the violent death of Estelle Bignall, the beautiful, neurotic wife of a well-to-do doctor (and aspiring resident playwright). In truth, suicide seemed more Estelle’s line—especially during the Christmas holidays—but a thief saved her the trouble, stealing all the presents and leaving her bound, gagged, and suffocated.

Instinct tells Detective Chief Inspectors Lloyd and Judy Hill that Estelle’s murder is far more complicated. At the crime scene there are too many footprints, too many fingerprints, too much conflicting evidence—and too many suspects: an elusive burglar, a sinister next-door neighbor, the victim’s secret lover, a scared kid with fresh bruises on his face. But which of them was desperate enough to commit murder?A native of Argyll, Scotland, Jill McGown has lived in Corby, England, since she was ten. She wrote her first novel, A Perfect Match, in 1983. Among those that have followed are Gone to Her Death, Murder at the Old Vicarage,
Murder . . . Now and Then, The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale, The Other Woman, A Shred of Evidence, Verdict Unsafe, Picture of Innocence, and Plots and Errors. Scene of Crime is her eleventh Lloyd and Hill mystery.Chapter One “I felt like a prat,” said Lloyd as he and Judy made their way downstairs from the room in the Christmas-decorated Riverside Family Center in which the so-called relaxation classes were held. It had been his first visit to such a thing. And, if he could possibly work out how to get out of it, his last, because the one thing it had not been was relaxing.

Judy snorted. “And I didn’t?”

“Well, at least you’re pregnant. Why do I have to do the breathing?”

“Thl’