Book Details:

Genre: Crime Fiction
Published by: Witness Impulse
Publication Date: 1/21/2014
Number of Pages: 276
ISBN: 9780062303967
Purchase Links:

Synopsis:

Pip Carlton is a devoted husband and a highly respected pharmacist, cherished by his loyal customers. When his wife dies in her sleep, with no apparent cause, he is distraught. Comforted by his caring assistant, Pip ignores the rumors about Margaret’s death, relieved that the police seem to have moved on.

But Prosecutor Helen West refuses to believe that Margaret simply slipped into her final slumber. As she probes deeper into the affairs of the neighborhood, she uncovers a viper’s nest of twisted passion, jealous rage, and lethal addictions.

As a sudden act of violence erupts, shaking the community, one lone man, armed with strange love potions, prepares to murder again…

Read an excerpt:

He checked the window, but the unbearable sobbing continued and suddenly the idea was fully formed, plucked out of cold storage into the stuffy heat. The window was shut. No ventilation, no moving air as he returned to bed and took her stiff little body in his arms.
‘Come on, sweetheart, there, there, there.’ She clutched him so hard he could feel her long nails digging into his shoulders. His sweating had stopped and his skin to her touch felt as cold as ice.

Author Bio:

“I grew up in rural Derbyshire, but my adult life has been spent mostly in London, with long intervals in Norfolk and Deal, all inspiring places. I was educated mostly in convent schools; then studied English and went on to qualify as a solicitor, working for what is now the Crown Prosecution Service, thus learning a bit about murder at second hand. Years later, writing became the real vocation, although the law and its ramifications still haunt me and inform many of my novels.

I’m a novelist, short story writer for magazines and radio, sometime Radio 4 contributor, (Front Row, Quote Unquote, Night Waves,) and presenter of Tales from the Stave. When I’m not working (which is as often as possible), I can be found in the nearest junk/charity shop or auction, looking for the kind of paintings which enhance my life. Otherwise, with a bit of luck, I’m relaxing by the sea with a bottle of wine and a friend or two.”-Frances Fyfield

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Deep Sleep. Essay no 3. DEEP SLEEP: the colour of pink.

Circa 1990 Here’s a file on your desk, Miss West.  Go easy. Thrown at her off the trolley he pushed round the building, distributing cases in accordance with the name of the person who should have them.  A pink-coloured cardboard file of a nasty colour. The pink folder indicated homicide of one sort or another.  The weary man who delivered it was entirely indifferent to the contents; he just delivered stuff off a trolley with squeaky wheels. Blue files indicated complaints against the Police.  (Blue, like the uniform, gettit?)  While Green was for everything else, Land grabs, wrong burials, perfidy and nuisance, electoral offences.  Beige was for Fraud. This was the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, dealing with the nation’s most serious and quixotic crimes.  The lawyers in here varied from lizards to slugs, to sharks and the permanently anxious and curious, corruption of any kind notable for its absence.   Helen West hated the colours of the cardboard files, and like everyone else, turned first to the PINK.  Inside these, there would always be post mortem photographs of the dead. Tucked inside the pink folder, she would always find a sheaf of prints of the scene of death, the first photos taken at the scene, to be edited long before they were shown to a Jury.   Bloody, foul and senseless.  Old lady beaten to death/ dead child/ violent, bloody dead. The bare bones of paper evidence.  (It would all be on disc, these days: then it was paper.)  She always turned to the photographs first, bracing herself. In this case, no need.  A bloodless, peaceful victime. A woman asleep, with a clean blanket pulled around her, dozing on clean sheets against a clean pillow in a clean, frilly room. A Deep Sleep with quiet dreaming, a woman surrounded by ordinariness in a plain, suburban house.  A good neighbour with good neighbours, who kept herself clean and tidy. Thin person of good repute; decent bed linen with a rosebud pattern. Pink.   One of the good neighbours of the deceased had answered the anxious call of her Partner at 9 one morning.  She doesn’t answer the phone.. can you check?  Not like her not to answer while I’m away at this conference, a hundred miles off.  Not like her not to phone before she goes to work? Can you check?  (No mobile phones then, or even smart ones.) Neighbour with key, checks.  Finds very dead Neighbour, looking like an Angel.  Clean linen, boring house, loving partner who worries. CAUSE OF DEATH UNKNOWN.  Dies in her sleep, aged 45. As you do.   Hackles rise on the neck of Helen West. She does not have it in her to believe in peaceful, unexplained deaths. They are not on her usual timetable. Usually, it’s straightforwardly brutal, ie man bored with wife hits her over the head with blunt object/ neighbour kills neighbour who is making too much noise, Beggar bludgeons, etc, etc. down and outs throttle each other for space. There’s no such thing as a peaceful death. A note on the police report. Brother in law of the deceased reports that partner and deceased used to mess around with chloroform for fun. Chloroform?  Helen West phoned a friend. Maybe this woman died of boredom.  Maybe not. Maybe this woman died because killing her was easier than saying Goodbye, I’ll give you Deep Sleep and Quiet Breathing, he says, rather than witness your reaction when I say, Goodbye. Kill you first, and leave after.   Helen West could see that scenario.  It was all there, on the page.  The Lady in the pink linen had not meant to die.  Frances Fyfield.