1 May 1986. Thirteen-year old Margaret ‘Minnie’ Hargreaves is murdered, and her body half buried on a building site at the edge of Holme Hill, a village in West Yorkshire where she lived with her parents. David Harrison, a near-neighbour, is convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. He dies in prison.
43 years later, Holme Hill becomes the scene of two more murders. The first to die is Rhys Williams, a lonely old widower, who is found sitting on a bench by the village cricket ground. One week later, as the long-redundant Methodist Church is being cleared out prior to conversion to luxury flats, the verger finds more than he bargained for: Squire Haley, former choirmaster, face down at the keyboard of the chapel organ. Both corpses have a quotation from the Bible pinned to them, along with four dates – the first two the days on which Williams and Haley were murdered, the last two, dates in the future. Dates on which two more people will be killed, perhaps?
Detective Chief Inspector Donald May is called in to head the investigation. Holme Hill was his boyhood home and the chapel the place where his family worshipped. At first, the murders seem inexplicable: two old men who had lived blameless lives – no reason to kill them; but the same murderer by the looks of it, so they must have something in common. A darker past begins to emerge as May and his team of DS Viv Trubshaw and DC Charlie Riggs investigate. Then a third murder, on the date forecast, again with a quotation from the Bible about the body. May knows when the fourth murder wil lbe committed; but who will the victim be and who is the perpetrator?
The Detective Chief Inspector has seven days to stop a murder and catch the criminal. May will discover much more than he expected when he started on 1 May 2019: the victims and the murderer; his own father; the chapel and the village; his marriage and his love for Detective Sergeant Trubshaw. All in one month; a month of murder.
David Baker’s murder mystery novel is now being serialised on https://channillo.com/series/a-month-of-murder/