Murder at Seabrook Pier | A Penrose Investigation (Book 1)

In this book

The players

Arthur Penrose Four months into Penrose Investigations, and about a dozen enquiries in.
Alice Penrose Sixteen, and editor of the school newspaper. Turns up with a sausage roll and what the Chronicle printed last September.
Margaret Holloway The client. Down from Ealing to settle her brother’s estate.
Nancy Rowe Housekeeper at the Mariner’s Rest. Kept the place going through the winter.
Philip Whitmore The solicitor at Drummond and Hale who handled the will.
Beatrice Finch Had eighteen sugar bowls. Now has twelve or thirteen.
Colonel Withers Walks the pier every morning with Biscuit, and keeps a notebook of the deck chairs.
Tom Bennett Runs the chandlery, and sees most of what comes and goes at the harbour.
Lionel Harper Keeps the bookshop downstairs, and takes in the post for the office.
Colin Finch Mrs Finch’s brother. Works behind the counter and arranges the biscuits.
Mavis Pritchard One of the stops the news makes on its way round Seabrook.
Inspector Wainwright On record in the Chronicle as finding no suspicious circumstances.
Dr Huang His letter from Chengdu arrives by airmail and goes into the drawer unopened.
Holmes The office windowsill, where he arrives each morning before Penrose, by a route nobody has worked out.

The case

A locked cabinet. No sign of forced entry. One item missing, and nobody can explain why.

Margaret Holloway has come to Seabrook to sort out the estate of her late brother, Edward. He ran a small guesthouse near the pier. He died six months ago, falling from the pier during a storm. Everyone said it was an accident.

But Edward left a Victorian music box to Margaret in his will. He named it specifically, singled it out from everything else he owned. When she opens the locked cabinet where he kept it, the box is gone. A clean rectangle in the dust is all that remains.

The police see a locked cabinet with no damage and no explanation. They suggest it was probably misplaced.

Margaret sees a small advert in the local paper.

Penrose Investigations. All mysteries great and small.

Arthur Penrose is a retired detective with a cat called Holmes, an office above a bookshop, and a habit of noticing things other people miss.

One object. Taken with precision. From a dead man’s cabinet.

Why would anyone steal a music box?

And on the pier, every morning, the deck chairs are in slightly different positions. Nobody can explain that either, except a retired colonel who has been writing it down.

Murder at Seabrook Pier is the first full-length novel in the Penrose Investigations series: cosy British mysteries set in a fictional seaside town, featuring a retired detective, his cat, and a grand-niece who is considerably better with the internet than he is.

Questions readers ask

Is Murder at Seabrook Pier a standalone?

Yes. Murder at Seabrook Pier is a complete mystery and needs no other book. It is the first full-length novel in the Penrose Investigations series, and the earlier harbour case is mentioned only in passing. Every Penrose mystery stands alone.

Is Murder at Seabrook Pier a cosy mystery?

Yes. Murder at Seabrook Pier has no gore and no swearing. The death at its centre happened six months before the book opens and is never shown. What is on the page is a locked cabinet, a pier in March and a good deal of tea.

Is there a cat in Murder at Seabrook Pier?

Yes. Holmes the cat is a grey tabby who lives with Arthur Penrose and is usually to be found on the office windowsill. He is an ordinary cat. He does not talk, and he does not solve the case.

Where is Seabrook?

Seabrook is a fictional seaside town on the south coast of England, with a Victorian pier, a working harbour and a High Street. No county is ever named. The nearest railway station is at Hartbury, two miles inland. Murder at Seabrook Pier is set there in March 2026, while the town is still waiting for Easter.

How long is Murder at Seabrook Pier?

Murder at Seabrook Pier is a full-length novel, planned at about twenty chapters. It has not been published yet, so there is no page count to give.

Is Murder at Seabrook Pier on Kindle Unlimited?

That is the plan. Murder at Seabrook Pier is intended for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited when it is published. It is not on sale yet.

Is there an audiobook of Murder at Seabrook Pier?

An audiobook of Murder at Seabrook Pier is in production. Where it will be sold has not been settled, so no shop is promised.

What order should I read the Penrose Investigations in?

Any order you like. Every Penrose mystery is a separate case, and Murder at Seabrook Pier is a good place to start. In story order the series runs: A Small Matter of a Missing Cat (the free prequel), Murder at Seabrook Pier, Grounds for Murder, The Seabrook Regatta Sabotage.

The series, and the order to read it in

Also in the series

Book 2Coming

Grounds for Murder

Stolen tools. Prize plants destroyed. And a week of trouble the police called a civil matter.

Coming to Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
Book 3Coming

The Seabrook Regatta Sabotage

Regatta week, and somebody is sinking Seabrook’s chances one boat at a time.

Coming to Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
Book 0Prequel

A Small Matter of a Missing Cat

Arthur Penrose spent thirty years catching criminals. He had rather hoped retirement would be quieter.

Free with the Postcards, coming soon.

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All the books, on the shelf