Book picks similar to
A Lively Form of Death by Kay Mitchell


mysteries
mystery
mystery-british
uk-setting

Death's Bright Angel


Janet Neel - 1988
    No prints. As forensics describes the weapon, Detective Inspector John McLeish and Sergeant Bruce Davidson from a London CID squad survey the savagely battered body of the purchasing manager of Britex Fabrics of Yorkshire. On the brink of an industrial disaster that threatens 1,400 jobs, Britex's financial losses are under the scrutiny of the Industrial Development Unit and its team leader Francesca Wilson, who hopes to save the company -- even as MeLeish begins his investigation of the murder of its purchasing agent.

OLD SINS, LONG MEMORIES


Angela Arney - 2014
    Lizzie Browne moves from London to a small town on the coast, looking forward to a quiet life, but when she finds a murdered patient on her first day it seems that perhaps Stibbington is not so quiet after all. DCI Adam Maguire, and colleague Steve Grayson, haven’t been challenged by a case for a long time, and welcome this break from their normal routine, except that there seems to be no apparent motive for anyone to kill a harmless young drop-out. When a second body, similar to the first, is found in Lizzie’s garden she is drawn into Adam’s investigation against her will, and against her better judgment her quiet life is riven with tension and conflict.

2 Cordelia Gray Mysteries: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman / The Skull Beneath the Skin


P.D. James - 2015
    Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Winding Up The Serpent


Priscilla Masters - 1995
    Provocatively dressed and elaborately made-up, Marilyn is also very dead. Despite a lack of evidence at the post mortem, DI Piercy is convinced that Marilyn was murdered. A newcomer and a woman in the remote moorland town, Piercy must battle against several prejudices in her determination to find the killer - but could she be wrong? Is it possible that Marilyn Smith's death was not murder at all...?

Heartland: A Novel (Hebrides)


John Mackay - 2004
    Iain Martin hopes that by returning to his Hebridean roots and embarking on a quest to reconstruct the ancient family home, he might find new purpose. But as Iain begins working on he old blackhouse, he uncovers a secret from the past, which forces him to question everything he ever thought to be true. Who can he turn to without betraying those to whom he is closest? His ailing mother, his childhood friend and his former love are both the building - and stumbling - blocks to his new life. Where do you seek sanctuary when home has changed and will never be the same again?

Serious Intent


Margaret Yorke - 1995
    Soon after their wedding, Richard discovers that his wife is a depressed alcoholic with violent mood swings. When Richard's attention strays to his neighbor, his wife begins a reign of domestic terror that threatens to destroy more than their marriage.

The Last Enemy


Grace Brophy - 2007
    After her mother’s death, she quits her teaching job and descends upon her poor but aristocratic relatives, the Count and Countess Casati, in Assisi. It takes a while before they realize, to their chagrin, that Rita has come to stay. When the family assembles to watch the penitentes procession in the town square during Easter Week, a Casati tradition, Rita does not join them as planned. Her corpse is later found in the family mausoleum. Alessandro Cenni, a commissario in the State Police of Umbria, and a handsome bachelor whose twin brother is about to become a bishop, must penetrate the secrets of the Casati family and their circle if he is to discover who killed Rita and why. But he is blocked by their powerful right-wing connections, and by a superior who prefers to arrest a scapegoat rather than risk political suicide. Aided by a loyal staff in his quest for that rarity—justice—he still must acknowledge that no one can defeat the last enemy, death itself. Grace Brophy grew up in Queens, New York. She now divides her time between New York and Terni, a village in Umbria, where she lives with her husband, a Uruguayan artist. This is the first in the Commissario Cenni series of investigations set in Italy.

Pascoe's Ghost and Other Brief Chronicles of Crime


Reginald Hill - 1979
    A female journalist faces skepticism from the police when she reports an assault, and finds she may have to confront the attacker herself. A family man wonders what sort of trouble the previous occupants of his new house were mixed up in—and finds some clues that were left behind in the move. These stories—and four more—from the author of the series starring Inspector Peter Pascoe and Superintendent Andrew Dalziel take us on a tour of the shadowy corners of Yorkshire, England, from a stormy churchyard to a gloomy attic, with tales of lust, greed, envy, and, of course, murder.

Crime in the Choir


Catherine Moloney - 2018
    This was not a centuries-old Christian burial. They are wearing modern-day clothes and there is evidence of foul play. Consecrated land has been sadistically violated. Detective Inspector Gilbert Markham is a rising talent of the Bromgrove police force. He is on the trail of the murderer, when another life is brutally claimed. Who is the savage killer lurking in this innocent place? DI Markham and his team are met with intense hostility when they step up their operation. Is this just local panic? Or are they about to stumble into a web of corruption which runs deeper than they could have ever anticipated? DI MARKHAM FACES A RACE AGAINST TIME TO SAVE HIS GIRLFRIEND FROM BEING THE NEXT VICTIM.

The Last House-Party


Peter Dickinson - 1982
    And there, one of them committed a dark and savage crime. Now, forty years later, the sole survivor of those opulent days must take up the disturbing mystery again--this time for keeps.

Someone Else's Skin


Sarah Hilary - 2014
    Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Marnie doesn’t talk much about her personal life, preferring to focus on work. Not even her partner, DS Noah Jake, knows much about Marnie’s past. Though as one of the few gay officers on the force and half Jamaican to boot, Noah’s not one to overshare about his private life either. Now Marnie and Noah are tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim.Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defense. A crowd of witnesses in the domestic violence shelter where she’s staying saw it happen, but none of them are telling quite the same story, and the simple question remains: how did Leo Proctor get in to the secure shelter? Marnie and Noah shouldn’t even have been there when it happened but they were interviewing another resident, Ayana Mirza. They’re trying to get Ayana to testify against her brothers for pouring bleach on her face for bringing dishonor to the family, and blinding her in one eye. But Ayana knows that her brothers are looking for her, and she has no doubt that they’ll kill her this time.As the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women's shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory: A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.

Ice Blue


Emma Jameson - 2011
    With the exception of his chosen career, too sordid for his blue-blooded family to condone, his life has been safe and predictable. But then he meets Detective Sergeant Kate Wakefield — beautiful, willful, and nearly half his age. When Hetheridge saves the outspoken, impetuous young detective from getting the sack, siding with her against Scotland Yard's powerful male hierarchy, his cold, elegantly balanced world spins out of control. Summoned to London's fashionable Belgravia to investigate the brutal murder of a financier, Hetheridge must catch the killer while coping with his growing attraction to Kate, the reappearance of an old flame, and the secret that emerges from his own past.

DETECTIVE HILLARY GREENE BOOKS 1–5 five absolutely gripping crime mysteries box set


Faith Martin - 2021
    

The Ayton Swans


Alison Greaves - 2012
    Detective Inspector David McClennan, sent to investigate her murder, finds himself in an unfamiliar world of students and academics, a world which contrasts starkly with the Flamingo club in the centre of town where the victim worked part-time. As two more young women are murdered and yet others disappear, and as he himself becomes increasingly fascinated by the feminist sociologist Caroline Morland, his search for the killer becomes a race against time.

Seeking the Dead


Kate Ellis - 2008
    A killer is on the prowl - a killer who binds and asphyxiates his victims before leaving their naked bodies in isolated country churchyards. The press are calling him the Resurrection Man.Tragic events from the past link Carmel with new-kid-on-the-block DI Joe Plantagenet, who, with his new boss, DCI Emily Thwaite, faces the unenviable task of identifying the killer before he claims another victim. The victims appear to have nothing in common but the manner of their deaths, but as Joe's investigations lead him to a pub with a sinister history, he is forced to consider that the case may have occult connections. Then Carmel becomes aware of a malevolent presence in her new flat and, when she starts to receive mysterious threats, it is Joe she turns to first. And that is when Joe is forced to get into the mind of a cunning - and scarily ruthless - killer.