ST ODA'S BONES

by Marcus Attwater

novel, epub or paperback

You never connected any of it with what happened thirty-one years ago. When the dig started, when the bones were uncovered, when they turned out to be much more recent than everyone expected. That was history. You only remembered Kester alive. Until the news came: ‘the police are treating this as a murder case’. Then you knew. After all that time, you finally knew what had happened to him. 

Three decades on, everyone who was there has long accepted their own version of events about the night Kester Johnson disappeared. But when an unexpected find lands the case on DI Collins’ desk, those certainties start to crumble, and life in Abbey Hill suddenly becomes a lot less peaceful. 

Owen Collins has never been very good at keeping the personal and the professional separate, and even a murder from long ago can cause present-day complications. The first person he sees at the scene of the crime is his former lover. The mother of the victim appears to care less about the case than he does. His star witness is also the best friend of his boss.  And then there is Jake, lost in a world of his own. With nothing to go on apart from what people choose to tell him, it looks like he may never unravel the mystery of St Oda's bones...