Grandmother’s Footsteps

image: book cover, Grandmother's Footsteps by Carol SmithThe cold-blooded butchery of a mother and her daughters triggers a wave of outrage in the media. Though not immediately obvious because they are so widely-spaced, this is just the latest atrocity in a series. An elderly spinster arranging flowers in a church, her little dog dead at her side. A schoolmaster with a party of boys. A bank manager. A yoga teacher. A social worker. Someone appears to be stealthily stalking them, targeting the virtuous and clean-living.

It takes the patient persistence of cartographer William Huxley to sense a link the police have missed and slowly unravel the puzzle. Stuck at home as a house husband with the two-year-old Morwenna while his high-flying wife, Edwina, plays with fire, William, the puzzle-solver, slowly assembles the pieces, aided solely by a cub reporter and the valiant cleaning lady, Mrs P.

When a prominent public figure is hacked to death, events take a sudden sharp curve for the worse. Particularly when it rapidly becomes clear that William is the next intended victim…

Read an extract from Grandmother’s Footsteps