BOOK ONE OF THE BEN DARLING MYSTERIES

The Seventh Yew

A BEN DARLING MYSTERY

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Synopsis

Colonel Juan Cardona is being hunted.

At least, that is what he believes.

A former Spanish-Cuban official now living in a strange Surrey house called Mordaunt’s Folly, Cardona has seen shadows in the grounds, heard an intruder inside locked rooms, and found a vampire bat’s wing nailed to his front door — the same death-token that once marked enemies in the Caribbean.

So he comes to Benjamin Darling.

Darling expects nerves, perhaps paranoia. Instead he finds a house full of secrets: a locked tower, a disused wing, a frightened companion, a brilliant woman in a wheelchair, a scholar next door who knows too much about Obeah, and a line of ancient yew trees overlooking a moonlit Tudor garden.

Then, on the night of the full moon, Cardona walks into that garden and is shot dead.

The evidence points perfectly to one man: Colin Thorne, Cardona’s neighbour, a damaged scholar with a Cuban wife, a hidden grievance, and a rifle beneath his garden floor.

Too perfectly.

Because Darling sees what the police do not: the seventh yew, the ninth yew, the impossible line of the bullet, and the terrible design behind a murder built to look like revenge from beyond the grave.

The Seventh Yew is an elegant country-house mystery of moonlight, obsession, Caribbean shadows, false evidence, and a dying man’s final cruelty.

BOOK TWO – THE CITY OF FIRE

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