Rina thinks that the intruders were after her gun, although it was of new real use to anyone. But who would have wanted the gun ... and willing to kill for it? Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of reading Julie Wassmer's debut, and the first book of this series, The Whitstable Pearl Mystery. So I was quite excited to read the second one and catch up with the lovely Pearl. After solving her first case as a private investigator on summer, she has been slowly building her business while still managing her restaurant. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone else was present or involved in Kevin's death," Mr Williams added.

A man involved in a long-running feud with another traveller family was jailed for life after murdering a grandfather and attempting to murder his son. Murder-on-Sea is the second book in Julie Wassmer’s popular crime series – now a major Acorn TV drama, Whitstable Pearl, starring Kerry Godliman as private detective and restaurateur, Pearl Nolan. DI Sebastion McGregor (Mac), relatively new to the area, is called to investigate when an elderly woman is found in her home, beaten to death, possibly due to a home invasion. Just the day before, she had talked to Mac about the two young teenagers who had broken into her home the night before. She had scared them away with gun ... although it had no firing pin, no bullets. Mr Isaacs was shot dead close to his home in front of his partner, two sons and two-year-old granddaughter by Charlie Broadway. I saw others draw parallels between Rina and Mrs. Marple, and I wouldn’t quite agree, other than Rina’s in her early sixties and knows the people in her neighbourhood, and human behaviour, well. Rina’s far more active and involved than Marple was, and for all her storming into the police station at the beginning of this book, I see Rina as kinder than the Victorian-minded Marple.

Good, solid whodunits, without gruesome details or gratuitous violence, Murder on Sea may be just your cup of tea’— Bec Stafford Melanie, 25, was a clerical worker at the Royal United Hospital in Bath with her whole life ahead of her. My Thoughts: This book has everything - domestic violence, runaways, murder, suicide, and kidnappings. Based in a small town in Britain, and told from multiple points of view, it’s definitely murder to start, but the readers piece it together before the others do. At that point, it all begins to unravel and snowball into so much more. The story focuses on DI McGregor more than Rina, but the real focus is on a sister’s love for her younger brother and everything she’ll do to protect him. She later returned home alone and invited Mr Baker to their house. Their children were staying with his parents.

Reading this made me feel happy as I love the author and I love Whitstable, it was also good to catch up on what the characters of Pearl, Dolly and DCI Mike McGuire had been up to. These characters are great, so down to earth and normal and I think that is why it works as you can relate to a lot of it, well apart from the murders, lol. Rina Martin, a resident of Frantham-On-Sea, us a retired actress with a taste for solving crime. (Think of Jessica Fletcher Murder, She Wrote or Miss Marple). When her friend and neighbor is murdered, she feels that Mac could use some help. He admitted to officers while on the platform that he had just killed his wife. Detectives were able to question him and subsequently charge him with murder. When the author tells the reader whodunnit early on in a story, the tension in a mystery story is more from watching all the other characters get close to the answers, and possibly also into danger. Which is the situation here, when Jane Adams starts the story with a series of burglaries, followed by murders and revelations of spousal and child abuse. Her first main character is a police officer, DI “Mac” McGregor, new to the Frantham-on-Sea force, and to the neighbourhood, with its families, nosy neighbours, and well-known criminals. That cringey phrase ‘cozy crime’ should be ditched for a start. There was nothing ‘cozy’ about a violent murder of an elderly disabled lady or of the descriptions of domestic abuse. And was it people smuggling? It was actually quite bleak!

Member Reviews

Following this incident, Broadway had challenged Mr Isaacs's son, Barry, to a fist fight, but instead John Broadway summoned his brother to fetch a shotgun. While Oxford had Morse, Whitstable, famous for its oysters, has Pearl . . . True to the tradition of classic crime, [Julie Wassmer] weaves a strong story into a setting that has more to offer than murder and mayhem’ Daily Mail Owen Pellow, of Burnham-on-Sea, was with his partner, Lisa-Marie Thornton on the morning of November 23, 2017. The trial heard how Lagwinowicz and Dmytryszyn took Ms Wells-Burr's body and drove it in her red Ford Focus to a secluded lane at Ashill.