Bloodline

Fiona Mountain

'Cinderella is in the bluebell woods at Poacher's Dell'

The anonymous note means nothing to ancestor detective Natasha Blake. Then one of her clients, an enigmatic old man who had commissioned a family tree of his granddaughter's boyfriend, is shot dead at his isolated farm in the Cotswolds, just as shocking facts about the past are brought to light. Is there a link?

Despite Natasha's reluctance to delve deeper, she knows that family histories hide many secrets, and that sometimes they can kill.

Seemingly unconnected yet haunting stories begin to emerge from ancient paper trails, like slowly developing photographs: two young soldiers - one German, one British - playing football in no man's land on Christmas Day 1914; a young couple's future ruined by an old man's obsession; Second World War land girls, inseparable friends until a fatal mistake tore them apart; and the eerie echo of a child in an English country house.

It is these individual lives that become the clues in Natasha's investigation, ghostly fingerprints that must solve a cold-blooded, blue-blooded crime, hidden for generations in the bluebell woods at Poacher's Dell.