Alice has made the most of her maternity leave, becoming simultaneously a proud mum (well, a mum, at least) and accidental amateur sleuth.

With her son, Jack, somehow a year old already, she is keen to continue to keep him alive and maybe finally catch up on some sleep … if she’s lucky. When an opportunity presents itself in the unexpected form of a sit-in protest, Alice and her friends willingly chain themselves to trees and settle in for some overdue rest – not the most comfortable arrangement ever, but at this point they’ll take whatever they can get.

But the next morning one of their fellow protestors is found strangled and instead of a peaceful protest, Alice and her friends find themselves swept away on a tide of intrigue involving rogue artists, an enigmatic local entrepreneur and nude protesting (optional) – a surprising, but not necessarily unwelcome, break from changing nappies and cleaning Weetabix off the dog.

For Alice, whose success rate in solving countryside murder is at an all-time high (one out of one), she cannot resist the chance to demonstrate her detectoring skills once more and assembles her gang of young mums to investigate this latest countryside mystery.

Dead Tired, the second Mothers’ Murder Club Mystery, was published in the UK with Bonnier in June 2024.