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The heat is on when a beautiful young woman is found dead on a beach at the height of summer
Every man in Hiverton knows Rachel Campion. She is the most gorgeous girl to have turned up in the fishing village in living memory. When she is discovered lying dead on the beach, Gently joins the throngs of summer visitors on their annual pilgrimage to the seaside in the midst of a summer heatwave - and as the temperature soars, the mystery deepens.
The long-buried skeleton of a woman is unearthed close to where Rachel's body was found and Gently suddenly has the riddle of two mysterious deaths to solve. Many of the locals, including the secretive brotherhood of fishermen, seem particularly reluctant to help Gently answer the vital questions: Why was Rachel Campion murdered? How is the old skeleton connected with the new crime? And who is the murderer?
235 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1959
He bought three of the shirts of the sort he had seen the reporter wearing. They were manufactured in Hong Kong and not very expensive. One of them was printed with rich fruit-like designs in green, orange, purple, and black, another featured rock-and-roll singers, the third film actresses. If that photographer really wanted something to enliven the silly season! ‘I’d better have a hat – one of those Italian straws with the green bands. And a pair of sunglasses. Have you sandals in a broad nine fitting?’ He finished up with a bottle of sun lotion and a threepenny ice cream cornet. Nibbling at the latter he began to feel happier, in spite of the intolerable heat. … If Gently had been down there on holiday he could hardly have behaved more eccentrically. That was Dyson’s fixed impression by the time they had finished lunch. - Inspector Gently acclimates to a heat wave in a coastal town.
