Delighted

I am delighted that the first book in The New Forest Mysteries has been published and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Murder in the New Forest is set, as the name suggests, in the New Forest in the south of England. Covering approximately 71,474 acres it is a vast unfenced area of land, and from a young age you learn to ‘hang onto the reins’ when you fall off your pony, or face the long walk home, alone.

In this book, Mary-Ellen Mitchell is discovered with a broken neck beside her grazing horse. DI Callum MacLean has relocated from Glasgow, and this is his first case. Initially it looks like an unfortunate accident, people fall from horses all the time, don’t they? But the more he examines the scene, the more convinced he becomes that it is murder.

It is set in and around the small village of Hale, near the town of Fordingbridge in Hampshire. In book 2 in the series the action takes place in the neighbouring village of Woodgreen.

If you have never strayed this far south, the New Forest is well worth a visit. It is steeped in history, myth and legend, from William Rufus being killed by an arrow on a deer hunt in August 1100, to the hanging of Alice Lisle in 1685.