Death Comes to Stay, RMT689D

There is something peculiarly satisfying about murder in a beautiful place. These four novels find their crimes in a Dordogne village, a Suffolk hotel, a lamp-lit English parish and the seafront streets of 1960s Brighton. And in every case the murder reaches into the lives of people who thought they knew their neighbours well. A detective, a superintendent, a village canon and an obituary writer: four investigators who are all too personally involved to let the case go. Country lanes and hotel corridors have rarely felt so unsettling.

Richard Coles, Murder Before Evensong (Canon Clement 1) - When Canon Daniel Clement proposes a lavatory for his Champton St Mary church, the parish is divided. Still, it takes a body in the back pew to reveal just how many grudges a sleepy English village can nurse.

Martin Walker, Enemy in the Village - When Bruno Courrèges finds a dead woman and a suicide note in a parked car above the Vézère valley, the case looks closed, but Bruno's instinct that something is wrong soon sets the whole village against him.

Clare Chase, Mystery at the Abbey Hotel - Obituary writer Eve Mallow's relaxing weekend at a luxury hotel is turned upside down when the glamorous owner is found dead in the surrounding woods, leaving Eve trapped in a building full of suspects.

Elly Griffiths, Now You See Them (The Brighton Mysteries 5)- 1963, and Superintendent Edgar Stephens is pulled from a funeral to investigate a missing teenage girl, only to discover her disappearance is one of three, all linked in ways nobody yet understands.