I had never read Lucinda Riley’s books before.  But I ran across “The Murders at Fleat House” on Netgalley and it sounded interesting. Since it was available and I was in the mood for a good mystery so I thought I’d give it a try.

It was a mystery written many years ago, before Lucinda Riley became a published writer and her only crime novel.

According to the brief introduction by her son (the author had died), the novel was unchanged since his mother had written it in 2006 and it had not been published until now.

I liked this book from the start but found it complicated.

For reasons unconnected with the book, I took a 4 day break when I was half-way through.  I wasn’t sure if I could  pick up on this complicated story.  But that was no problem at all.

But back to the book itself.  It starts with a murder of a student at an English boarding school which of course gets your attention pretty quickly.  If you recall the title has the word “murders’ so you can be pretty sure that there will be more.

But those crimes don’t come right away since it is necessary to introduce the many characters in the story besides the murderer and the murdered.  It is done well and quite a few of those introduced seem to have a motive for murder.

The main character is Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter who had recently left the police force in London because of a bad marriage to another officer and was settling down in in small  village in Norfolk, East Anglia.  Before she is completely settled, she is asked to lead the investigation into the student’s murder.

As mentioned before, many of the characters had motive. DI Hunter has to sort through all that as well as a number of personal issues.

The story is fast paced and well-done.  I enjoyed it and hope you will too.