Retribution (Constable crime) [Hardcover]

'Gwen Moffat creates vivid characters and not only manages a fast-moving, well-patterened plot, but also shows an aptitude for brilliant atmospheric set piece' -Daily Mail * 'One of the crime shelf's defter hands.' - Matthew Coady, Guardian * 'Irresistible' - Financial Times * 'Not since I read Brave Cowboy have I been so enthralled by a book' - Edna O'Brien, Sunday Times

But Melinda Pink, visiting on holiday, knows better. She knows that yard-thick walls do more than shelter their occupants from the elements; they can also muffle screams. For there are serpents in paradise; dead sheep go unburied, tax dodges and benefit fraud are rife; the proprietor of the tearooms falls prey to a rumour of salmonella poisoning - and then the interfering village busybody is found tangled among the reeds of the flooded beck. Aged now, arthritic but insatiably curious, it is Miss Pink who takes up the cudgels on the behalf of the other intrepid local old folk - both alive and dead, and - as it soon transpires - of other, younger victims. Underage sex and extramarital affairs are not confined to the inner cities. Against a backdrop of a stark and beautiful countryside is woven a thread of love and lust, of betrayal and revenge, and if it is Miss Pink who detects a murderer in the midst of a small community, the problem is solved by the last victim, and justice neatly if horribly executed.

Gwen Moffat has written six travel books and over twenty-five novels including those in the Miss Pink series published by Constable. She has been a mountain guide and broad-caster and has travelled extensively in the American West and the wild places of Britain. She lives in the Lake District.