Turn The Page: MURDER IN THE MINE (Inspector Crow #5) by Roy Lewis

Discover Inspector Crow of Scotland Yard. Enjoy a beautifully told story from a time before smart phones and DNA testing. Full of twists and turns, this will have you gripped from start to finish.

“Roy Lewis can always be counted on for precise, original, interesting environment…yet his characters and settings always interact.” Financial Times

Detective John Crow is called in to run the investigation in this South Wales mining community. He discovers flaws in the dog owner’s account and a visit to the north east of England reveals the dead woman’s identity.

Then there is a surprise confession. But the skeletal Inspector Crow is not convinced, and he pursues the investigation into the dead woman’s complicated life. New suspects emerge.

But as Crow closes in on the killer, complicated questions remain. Full of intrigue, this mystery will have the reader guessing until the very end.

Set in England in the late early 70s, this is the fifth book to feature Inspector John Crow. More coming soon.

“Each Lewis seems to better the last. Here is an intriguing puzzle and likely police work and a fine picture of Northumbrian society and countryside” The Times

“Roy Lewis has demonstrated an enviable range both in geography and style…a nice neat story” The Financial Times

“A thorough, unpretentious and immensely solid piece of work with an interesting and likeable hero” Times Literary Supplement

Skeletally-built, mild-mannered Inspector John Crow is established in the Murder Squad in London and constantly meets hostility when he is called upon to work on murder cases in regional crime squads in Wales and the Midlands. He displays strong moral feelings, and a sensitivity which brings him into conflict with regional staff as he doggedly and successfully pursues the truth in cases where he is called in.

“Aspiring authors are often advised to write about what they know. I did just that with my first novel—A Lover Too Many—using my legal training to develop a sub-plot based on a real case. And in my second novel—Error of Judgment—I placed DI Crow in the world of higher education. It was a milieu in which I worked. But in A Question of Degree I went back to my roots: the Welsh valley environment, and the closed societies where secrets are rarely divulged…”

“The Rhondda Valley was greening again as the pits closed down for ever, but Dai Chippo’s dog is missing—and when the dog is found at the bottom of a derelict pit shaft he is not alone. DI Crow is called in to investigate the death of the murdered young woman and finds himself up against a closed, secretive society, where information is rarely divulged to outsiders. He has to travel to Canada to dig out the truth and answer the question that disturbs him: why would an innocent man confess to murder?”

“I once shared a lift with historical novelist Philippa Gregory. We’d been invited to Collins’ publishers celebration of 60 years of the Crime Club. The publishers chose 12 novels to reissue in special editions. One of these was A Question of Degree ( now reissued)…Both I and Ms Gregory were living in the north east at the time, but we never met again…”

Roy Lewis is a well-established crime writer with 60 novels to his name. He lives in the north of England where he sets many of his books. He is a former college principal and Inspector of Schools who now runs business training programmes and has business interests in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. He has three children - all of them lawyers.