SHRINK SOLVES MURDER

Or does she?

A little taster from the Prologue of my book, Shrink Solves Murder, published on 7th May. The audio book is read by Joanna Scanlan.

‘Don’t go so near to the edge!’ yelled Patricia Phillips at a group of Korean tourists taking what appeared to be wedding photographs on the edge of the Seven Sisters cliffs. ‘These cliffs crumble,’ she shouted. ‘It’s not worth dying for. Get back!’

She planted her hands on her hips and waited. The tourists looked back at her blankly, then carried on posing not discernibly any further away from the white chalky edge. With a loud exhale, Patricia turned on the heel of her ancient walking boot and marched along the path across the Downs towards her cottage.

‘Every bloody day,’ she mumbled to herself, pulling her dry-robe tighter around her. ‘Every bloody day, and no one listens.’ She looked up. ‘Put that dog on a lead,’ she barked at a woman who had let her black Labrador loose in the sheep field. She got another blank stare in response. The dog lolloped in the direction of the flock and the sheep began to canter towards the cliff. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Pat said under her breath, then commanded, ‘Sit!’ with all the authority she could find. Luckily, the dog took more notice of her than anyone else had that morning.

‘He’s never chased sheep before,’ began the Labrador’s owner, a short woman with cropped ginger hair. ‘Normally he’s very well beha—’

‘Lead!’ It was all Patricia could manage to yell back, with a dismissive wave of her hand. She couldn’t even blame how furious she felt on the menopause any more, she thought, just as a sharp twang pierced her hip joint. She winced. The pain alone could have been justification enough for her mood, even if it hadn’t been exacerbated by idiots.

The wind picked up as she crossed the brow of the hill and strode on towards her cottage. It was always blustery up here; the grasses were flattened, the elderly hawthorns and gorse permanently bent, buffeted and bruised by the prevailing wind. She tugged harder on her dry-robe, regretting having stayed in the water that bit longer than usual. The English Channel had chilled her to the marrow. She was of the opinion that no one could possibly get into the sea and come out in a bad mood, unless, of course, they needed a hip replacement and were too bloody-minded to admit it.

She eschewed the small wooden gate for walkers to the side of the cattle grid and picked her way across the metal bars. As she turned the corner towards her eighteenth- century brick and flint cottage, she stopped in her tracks. Not again! Every bloody day. There was yet another car parked on the grass verge. Right in front of her doorstep. She was just about to shout, ‘Get off my land!’ like a crimson-faced farmer when a woman and a hefty looking policeman got out of the Ford Focus. She inhaled deeply and downgraded her retort to an icily polite ‘Can I help you?’

‘Dr Phillips?’ said the woman, flashing a badge. ‘May we come in?’…

Without giving too much away here is another quote from the book. This passage is from after Pat’s psychotherapy client, Henry who was also Derek’s boyfriend, has been found dead at the bottom of the cliff. Our heroine, Pat, has an unsavoury habit of spying on her next door neighbours from her bathroom window…

“Standing on the bath with her binoculars, she could see Derek cooking himself in the sun, his oiled body catching the light like polished bronze. He seemed to be wearing earphones, feet tapping to a beat, one hand occasionally conducting an invisible orchestra. Pat was transfixed. There were as many circles of grief, she sometimes thought, as there were circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and she’d seen most of them. The manic. The catatonic. The mute. The crumpled figure in the foetal position. The bottle as confessional. The textbook Kübler-Ross cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But Derek seemed to have whipped through the lot at astonishing speed and landed somehow in what looked suspiciously like acceptance, glossy, tanned and musically inclined.

Grief took many forms, she reminded herself. But this was a new one on her.

Fi suddenly appeared, dressed in what could only be described as a black dental-floss bikini. Pat had to give her her due. All the athleisure-wearing had clearly paid off, because from the angle of the avocado bathroom, Fiona looked lean, toned and definitely younger. Derek patted the sunbed cushion. Fi sat down and ran her hand over his chest. It could have been a finger, but Pat couldn’t quite see due to the top of the leylandii that kept frustratingly swinging in and out of her view. Whatever was going on, it looked intimate. So, Derek apparently played for every team, she concluded. Henry, Fiona, whoever he fancied. Perhaps he was a hobosexual, any gender so long as it came with a roof, or indeed fancied him, and he seemed to have very little problem mixing marketing and pleasure. And judging by the spring in her step, the constant flicking of her hair and the brevity of her bikini, Fiona had been working very hard on her brand all morning.

Pat’s mobile suddenly rang at full volume, its cacophonous bell echoing around the bathroom, and likely outside too. Fi turned to look up at her neighbour’s window just as Pat slipped, swore and landed flat on her back in her bath. Writhing in pain, she answered.

‘Argghghg. Yes?’
‘It’s me,’ said Sue. ‘Are you all right?’…

To get your copy click HERE

‘Fantastic book: wickedly witty, with delightful, quirky characters and a cracking plot’ JAQUELINE WILSON

‘A crash course in psychotherapy cunningly disguised as a very entertaining murder mystery’ HENNING WEHN

‘I’ve always admire the sleuth in Philippa Perry and that’s more than vindicated in this assured and hugely enjoyable murder mystery debut. It’s brilliant!’ THE REV RICHARD COLES

‘A joy. Cosy crime with a side order of psychological insight’ JENNIE GODFREY

‘A cunning murder disguised as a suicide, a brilliant psychotherapist who doesn’t believe what she’s told, and a cast of village eccentrics who help (and hinder) her investigations, this is cosy crime at its most enjoyable’ NATALIE HAYNES

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