Murder in Treggan Bay

Treggan Bay is the kind of place where everyone knows who has keys to what. In May 1996, a body on the village library floor turns a simmering dispute into a reckoning.

London journalist Noah Yalland returns to South Devon to clear his late mother's cliff-top cottage, planning to sell and go. The Landmark Syndicate's proposed waterside villas have already split neighbours; when their envoy, Frank Cullen, is found bludgeoned, suspicion falls on the locals who challenged him the night before.

Eileen Thorne-village librarian and former registrar-sees her quiet order upended as Sergeant Scott Langdon starts asking sharp questions. Noah, who had his own run-in with Cullen, is suddenly far more than a witness.

This is a pre-digital mystery: answers live in parish registers, council minutes, sign-in books, and remembered alibis. Noah wants to do right by his father and keep Leo, the new café owner, out of the developers' crosshairs… even as long-buried records, generational feuds, and a growing pull towards Leo complicate every choice.

With gossip moving faster than facts and the bay's future on the line, can the truth surface before the wrong person pays-or before the deal becomes impossible to stop?

A cosy, character-led coastal whodunnit with fair-play cluework, found family, and a queer slow burn (fade-to-black intimacy). First in the Treggan Bay Mysteries; reads cleanly as a standalone.