Book description
The Chalcot estate, a piece of leafy, traditional England hidden away
behind high creeper-covered walls, was caught in a time warp. Once
again, as every year in late autumn, the killing season was about to
begin. The predestined victims, hundreds of purpose-bred pheasants,
their copper and red and bronze and green plumage echoing the colours of
the landscape, wandered and pecked without heed while the shooting party
assembled. The landowner, Lewis Glaven, had arranged the shoot to
introduce his son Will's shy fiancée to country house living. Hope
Meynell was lovely, but most unsuitable for Chalcot, and Lewis was no
the only one who disapproved of the engagement. On that crisp November
day, as the shoot reached Belmost wood, tensions began to rise. The
shooting party - local gentry, including a discarded girl friend of
Will's, and an upwardly mobile CID officer, Martin Tain - waited eagerly
for the beaters to drive the pheasants out of the trees and over their
shotguns. Spectators, including Hope , waitied with revulsion for the
slaughter to begin. And then, as trespassing Animal Rights protesters
tried to put a stop to the killing, an event occurred that would change
forever the lives of those for whom the estate was home. Martin Tait
reported it as a tragic shooting accident. But when DCI Douglas
Quantrill, head of Breckham Market divisional CID, took charge of the
investigation, it became apparent that a murder had taken place.
Sheila Radley was born and brought up in rural Northamptonshire, one of
the fortunate means-tested generation whose further education was free.
She went from her village school via high school to London University,
where she read history. She served for nine years as an education
officer in the Women's Royal Air Force, then worked variously as a
teacher, a clerk in a shoe factory, a civil servant and in advertising.
In the 1960s she opted out of conventional work and joined her partner
in running a Norfolk village store and post office, where she began
writing fiction in her spare time. Her first books, written as Hester
Rowan, were three romantic novels; she then took to crime, and wrote 10
crime novels as Sheila Radley.
