The Mandrake Murders

Detective Inspector Kit Blackwell came to Auglire Castle for six quiet weeks — a half-written cookbook, his border terrier Arthur, and a catch up with his old friend, Lord Capvering. He did not come for murder.

When a long-serving household retainer is found drowned and Storm Derek cuts the island off, Kit is thrown back into the day job. With the local force stretched thin, his unlikely ally is Juno Reay — Lady Adelina's brilliant, precise, faintly unnerving assistant, who notices what others miss.

As wind and rain hammer the castle walls, the island gives up its secrets one tincture at a time. A death thirty years ago, written off as natural causes. A household that learned to keep quiet. And someone at Auglire Castle who has been waiting for the truth to surface.

Steeped in apothecary craft, country folklore, and the slow turning of an old family's deepest shame, The Mandrake Murders introduces DI Kit Blackwell and Juno Reay — the first darkly cosy mystery from K.A. Dempsey.