Footnotes For The Recently Departed

Every old book remembers the hands that held it. This one remembers a murder.

Three days after town councillor Desmond Farr drowns in Bellhaven harbour, the book comes back. Rare-book dealer Cecily Mallory sold him that worn little local history herself, only months ago — and now it's sitting on the returns shelf of The Margin Note, no note, no explanation, every margin crammed with his handwriting. Everyone has already agreed what happened to Desmond: a slip on a dark night, cold water, an accident.

Cecily knows better. The moment her bare hands touched the book, she felt his last furious hour — and it didn't end in the water by accident. His scribbled margin notes trace a harbour redevelopment scheme worth a fortune, and more than one person in town wanted it stopped.

But an echo isn't evidence. To prove a respectable accident was murder, Cecily must read between Desmond's lines and rebuild the truth where anyone can see it — with a sharp-tongued friend in the Heritage Society, a sceptical detective who believes about a third of what she hears, and one large grey cat who keeps watch over it all.

Footnotes for the Recently Departed is the first Margin Notes Mystery: a cozy, atmospheric whodunit with a paranormal twist — old books, buried history, a clever amateur sleuth, and a cat with secrets of his own.