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Readers love the Ryder & Loveday series

‘Insanely brilliant’

‘I absolutely loved this book’

‘Faith Martin, you’ve triumphed again. Brilliant!’

‘If you haven’t yet read Miss Martin you have a treat in store’

‘I can safely say that I adore the series featuring Dr Clement Ryder and Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday’

‘This book is such a delight to read. The two main characters are a joy’

‘Yet another wonderful book by Faith Martin!’

‘As always a wonderful story, great characters, great plot. This keeps you gripped from the first page to the last. Faith Martin is such a fantastic author’

About the Author

FAITH MARTIN has been writing for nearly thirty years, under four different pen names, and has published over fifty novels. She began writing romantic thrillers as Maxine Barry, but quickly turned to crime! As Joyce Cato she wrote classic-style whodunits, since she’s always admired the golden-age crime novelists. But it was when she created her fictional DI Hillary Greene, and began writing under the name of Faith Martin, that she finally became more widely known. Her latest literary characters, WPC Trudy Loveday and city coroner Dr Clement Ryder, take readers back to the 1960s and the city of Oxford. Having lived within a few miles of the city’s dreaming spires for all her life (she worked for six years as a secretary at Somerville College), both the city and the countryside/wildlife often feature in her novels. Although she has never lived on a narrowboat (unlike DI Hillary Greene!) the Oxford canal, the river Cherwell, and the flora and fauna of a farming landscape have always played a big part in her life – and often sneak their way onto the pages of her books.

Also by Faith Martin

A Fatal Obsession

A Fatal Mistake

A Fatal Flaw

A Fatal Secret

A Fatal Truth

A Fatal Affair

A Fatal Night

FAITH MARTIN

Dedication

For all my readers. After nearly thirty years of being published, I feel more grateful than ever for their continued support.

Prologue

Oxford 1962

It was Christmas Day and the citizens of the beautiful university city of Oxford were feeling replete with turkey and plum pudding. Most of them were looking forward to Boxing Day, thinking only of a lazy day spent by the fire, with nothing more onerous to focus on than the inevitable return to work and the normal, humdrum routine of living.

But the twenty-sixth day of December that year brought with it a blizzard of epic proportions, presaging a period of bad weather that would rage and rage and never seem to end. It was the start of what would later become known as ‘The Big Freeze’, when the whole of the United Kingdom would be locked in the grip of snow and ice for nearly four months.