Mary-Ellen Mitchell, a business owner and wife of the prominent portrait artist Sir Michael Mitchell falls from her horse on Hale Purlieu, breaks her neck and dies.
DI Callum MacLean has relocated from the busy bustle of Glasgow to the quiet rurality of the New Forest where herds of wild ponies roam free, and animals glue the community together. Was he wise when accepting this post to disregard his fear of animals and horses in particular?
Attending the scene of death he is assailed by uneasy thoughts, that, for once have nothing to do with horses. Assisted by Sergeant Daisy Donaldson, his animal-loving second in command and the rest of his new team, Callum investigates. But if the fall from her horse didn’t kill her, then who killed Mary-Ellen Mitchell?
Murder in the New Forest is set in and around the village of Hale on the northern edge of the now National Park. The New Forest remains one of the largest tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in Southern England. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror in about 1079 and featured in the Domesday Book. It covers a vast area, some 566 km2 (219 sq mi) and has remained largely unchanged since that time.
