The Evening's Amethyst
The Evening’s Amethyst: A Nora Tierney English Mystery
by M. K. Graff
About The Evening’s Amethyst
The Evening’s Amethyst: A Nora Tierney English Mystery
Cozy Mystery
5th in Series
Setting – Oxford, England
Publisher : Bridle Path Press (September 21, 2021)
Paperback : 372 pages
ISBN-10 : 0990828735
ISBN-13 : 978-0990828730
Digital Edition: 336 pages
ASIN : B09JB193D3
Who is Verity? That becomes a central question for American Nora Tierney, who has moved to her new Oxford home with her fiance, DI Declan Barnes, and her young son. Declan’s new case at Exeter College coincides with a frantic call from Nora’s stepsister, Claire Scott: a fellow graduate student has died in a fall, and Claire begs Nora to help her prove her friend didn’t commit suicide. The sisters conduct their own snooping, while Declan and his team juggle this death with a cold case that proves to be more surprising than Declan could ever imagine.
Excerpt
Cumbria
Spring 1992
He returned to the same pub on his next trip through a few weeks later, the sun warmer now, spring fully taken hold, and there was the child again, that poor lad. Sitting in a soggy nappy, even he could see that from where he sat, and maybe full of something else, too. The boy looked up at him and smiled, uncomplaining, his two bottom teeth shining in a face grubby with snot running down to his top lip. Jim took out a clean handkerchief and cleaned off the boy’s face as best he could. The lad lifted his arms to be picked up, and it was all he could do to restrain himself.
He’d had enough, and when he returned his empty pint glass, he asked the bartender about the boy.
“Donnie?” The man hooked a thumb in the direction of the darkest corner, where a skinny girl with bad teeth and lank hair sat draped over an equally skeletal man with inked arms extending from the cut off sleeves of his denim shirt. “Works here evenings when we get busy, spends her days looking for a new baby daddy.”
They looked like addicts to Jim. He had a hard time reconciling that smiling boy with these two as he thought of the dirty nappy and face, the grungy pen. Donnie deserved better, that little boy, a proper mum and dad to care for him.
As the idea took hold, he deliberately drove past the pub on his next trip past. He couldn’t stop again for a pint or the bartender would remember him. But each subsequent week he drove by and slowed down. And each time, he could see that dirty pen and the little lad trapped inside.
He decided to be sensible, and if things fell into place, well, that was a sign, wasn’t it? He made preparations at home. He applied for and received a transfer to the company’s Woodstock branch. Why not? He was one of their best sellers of infant formula and pharmaceuticals, and the Woodstock office was happy to have him. Dora brightened right up and fell in with the move when he told her that the transfer to a more densely populated area brought a better chance of adoption. The waiting list in Bowness had been long; they’d been warned they might have to wait years in a rural area. It made sense that Oxford might bring a child faster, but in any case, Dora chose not to ask too many questions, for which he was grateful. She focused on shopping for items to furnish a nursery. He let her.
About M. K. Graff
Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. The Evening’s Amethyst is the fifth in the Nora Tierney series. Her short story “Quiche Alain” is in the Agatha-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible.
Author Links
Blog http://auntiemwrites.com;
Twitter http://twitter.com/GraffMarni (@GraffMarni);
Facebook http://facebook.com/bluevirgin.graff;
Publisher http://bridlepathpress.comPurchase Links – Amazon
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