Millie Ravensworth

When a body is found in a field outside Lyme Regis, local police officers Dougie Anderson and Wendy Sharman are stumped. Who is the victim, and is his death related to a local gang war? Dorset’s Major Crime Investigations team is quickly brought in. But what the police don’t know is that Rosamund Winters, swimming club member and friend of Dougie’s mother-in-law Annie Abbott, has vital information… even if she doesn’t realise it. Why is a picture in one of six identical cottages Rosamund is hired to clean very slightly different from the others? Who is the mysterious woman who let herself in and cleaned before Rosamund got there? And what’s that awful smell in cottage number one? Will Rosaumnd come forward with what she knows, and help the police solve the crime? Or will her friend Annie’s interference prevent justice from being done?

It's summer and Lyme Regis is rammed with tourists. DC Tina Abbott is hoping her kids can have some fun on the beach with their granny Annie, who in turn is enjoying time with her swimming club. But then Annie and her friends’ morning swim is disturbed when they spot the body of local artist Clifford Muldoon, floating near the Cobb. Tina has things under control. But Annie, emboldened by her involvement in Lyme Regis’s last murder case, wants to get involved. And could the swimmers have information that might help solve the crime?

DC Tina Abbott from Dorset Police’s Major Crime Investigations Team is on maternity leave, and spending some time with her mum Annie in Lyme Regis. But then after a morning swim, two members of Annie’s swimming club discover a dead body in another member's car. A body that later vanishes into thin air. When the body later turns up in another location, Tina gets involved, despite her bosses telling her she’s not supposed to be working. But Tina only knows one side of the story. Will the swimming club members come forward and tell the police what they know? Is one of their members involved in the murder? And can they prevent Kevin, the angry seagull, from attacking the beachfront caravan where the club’s youngest member lives?

Annie Abbott is a busy woman. As well as attempting to create her grandchildren's best ever Christmas and helping her police detective daughter Tina juggle work, kids and Christmas preparations, she's been roped in to run a pottery shop after a shopkeeper friend was injured in a robbery. But this is Annie Abbott, which means a mystery isn't far away. Why did the thief steal the ugliest trinket in the shop? Why does the same trinket, a kitsch pottery reindeer, keep turning up in unexpected places? And is it all related to the state of the drains running along the back of the shop, at Lyme Regis's Old Mill? Christmas doesn't stop Annie and the swimming club gang from interfering in another case in this gripping festive mystery set on the Jurassic Coast.

Read more about Diana, Zaf and Gus! In these bonus stories, you can get more of the Chartwell and Crouch team's exploits and sleuthing, as an exclusive addition to the main books. Stories include: Mystery at the National Gallery – in which Zaf and Diana solve an art crime and become friends; The Eccleston Square Mystery – a mystery right outside Diana's London flat; Gus the Theatre Cat – Gus is missing in the theatre, can Newton the bus driver find him? And Larry the Downing Street Cat Goes Missing – it's election day, should Larry follow that handsome tabby and his lady friend?