The first three mysteries in the “beautifully crafted,” Silver Dagger Award–winning police procedural series set in Kent, England ( The Washington Post ) .
Detective Inspector Luke Thanet may be a family man with a soft heart and bad back, but he also has a bloodhound’s nose for murder. With Sgt. Mike Lineham at his side, no mystery is too tough.
The Night She Died : Beautiful Julie Holmes lies dead in her front hall with a kitchen knife through her heart. The perpetrator could have been a burglar, a jealous husband, or a spurned lover, but the real answer may lie in a death that happened twenty years ago.
Six Feet Under : Middle-aged cleaning woman Carrie Birch doesn’t strike Thanet as a likely candidate for murder. But when he digs up the dirt on her, he discovers a surprisingly long list of suspects.
Puppet for a Corpse : Dr. Arnold Pettifer is dead from an apparent overdose, but Thanet isn’t so certain it’s suicide. After he discovers the doctor’s pregnant wife had a lover, he begins to suspect her—but then again, nothing about this case is what it seems.
"I was born and brought up in South Wales, went to Bridgend Grammar School and then on to Bristol University, where I read modern languages before moving to Kent, the background of the Thanet novels, to teach French at Dartford and Erith Grammar Schools.
Moving to the Maidstone area on my marriage, I then spent several years devoting myself to bringing up my three children. During that time I trained as a marriage guidance counsellor and subsequently worked as one for thirteen years.
You may think that marriage guidance counsellor to crime writer is rather a peculiar career move, but although I didn’t realise it at the time, of course, the training I received was the best possible preparation for writing detective novels. Murder mysteries are all about relationships which go disastrously wrong and the insights I gained into what makes people tick, into their interaction and motivations, have been absolutely invaluable to DI Thanet, my series character, as have the interviewing skills I acquired during my years of counselling.
I began to write after a long illness in 1975. The success of my first book, a suspense novel called HARBINGERS OF FEAR, gave me sufficient impetus to carry me through the two rejections which followed - very disheartening at the time, but invaluable in retrospect.
It was during this period that I realised that the crime novel is of such diversity that it offers enormous scope to the writer and decided to attempt to lay the foundation for a series of detective novels in my next book. This was the THE NIGHT SHE DIED." This was the first in a 15 book series starring Detective Inspector Luke Thanet. Severe repetitive stress injury caused her to stop writing in 2000.
She is an award winning author, receiving a Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain.
Yes! Very worth the read! Dorothy Simpson never fails to exercise our little grey cells. Inspector Thanet leads us Into the mystery of solving mysteries. Who done it? Can you untangle the knots Simpson has created? Intrigue , interesting plots & characters, very well crafted. What more can you want?
for the purpose of the reading challenge, this three volume set counts as one book, which doesn't seem right. But then a short story or novelette also counts as one book and that doesn't seem right either. :)
Excellent series. Really like the main character and how he treats his coworkers and family. Great descriptions of how he approaches snd ultimately solves the crimes.