Overdue

Jan Vale was supposed to be taking a holiday.

After the events that have unsettled life in Penraven, a week away with an old school friend seems exactly what she-and Moss-need. So Jan leaves the library behind and travels by steam train to the tiny Cornish coastal town of Morwen Quay, where Agatha Wishstone is waiting at Gull House.

Agatha is a retired pharmacist with three cats, a sharp tongue and little patience for most of humanity. She and Jan have remained friends for decades, largely through letters, and although they have not seen each other since Jan's husband's funeral, some friendships simply pick up where they left off.

Jan expects sea air, long walks with Moss, cream teas, the occasional glass of scrumpy for Agatha, and perhaps a few quiet games of cards.

Then Margaret Trelawney fails to arrive for the weekly bridge game.

Agatha knows Margaret's habits well enough to realise something is wrong. When she and Jan go to check on her, they find the cottage door open-and Margaret lying dead inside.

What first appears to be an unexplained death soon points towards something far older.

Altered medical records. Missing medication. Disguised payments. An old photograph that isn't quite what it seems. And a trail leading back eighteen years to West Treven and a group of people who have spent a very long time convincing themselves that silence was the same thing as innocence.

As Agatha's pharmaceutical knowledge meets Jan's instinct for records, patterns and the details other people overlook, they begin separating what actually happened from what people have spent years believing happened.

Because almost everyone connected to the past has something to hide.

But being guilty of something doesn't necessarily make someone a murderer.

While Moss discovers that holidays involve gulls to chase, beaches to explore, three highly opinionated cats and considerably more treats than Jan considers reasonable, Jan discovers that even away from Penraven, some questions refuse to be left unanswered.

And somebody in Morwen Quay has already killed to keep one answer buried.

Overdue is the third Jan Vale Mystery by Robert Porter-a character-driven Cornish mystery about friendship, memory, conscience, old secrets and the uncomfortable difference between what we remember and what the evidence proves.