A disparate group of people, thrown together in darkest Dorset, strive for a sense of community against a post-pastoral backdrop of shady goings on and murder.
A young Muslim towny is married off to cricket-mad rural sub-postmaster Majid and starts a new life as Probationary Police Constable Skandi Khan in rural Dorset. Her neighbours are hapless IT operative James, thrusting and charmless Financial Executive Roger, and prickly Human Resources Manager Stephanie. Shortly to be joined by soul-eating sea-demon Sireen.
There are posh people. Lots of posh people. And possibly witches. Cue murder, mayhem, marriages, deaths and births. Will anyone win through to happy ever after?
Genre: FICTION / Fantasy / ContemporarySteady sales
Underneath the window in the small, dark, light-green-painted kitchen is a stainless steel sink fitted with a chrome mixer tap lording it over an up-turned grey plastic washing-up bowl. The sink takes pride of place in a procession of laminate-topped chipboard base units that march from the corner by a free standing enamelled gas cooker (that although wiped clean, boasts dark patches of baked-on deep fat fryer residue along its edges and protuberances) past the window and then on at right angles towards the door into the passageway that leads from the front to the back of the house.
Above the worktops along this right-hand wall a row of white cupboards stands out in the fading daylight.
A small drop-leaf table sits in the centre of the kitchen, whilst a large plastic dustbin, full to the brim with white basmati rice, fills the corner facing the door.
All the best that a long-bust vendor of flat pack furniture had to offer in the early nineties.
The worktops are clear, and the kitchen knives should all be hanging from a magnetic strip midway between the worktop and the wall cupboards, but there is a gap. The missing knife is about twelve inches long, and is five feet off the ground, blade upright, between the cooker and the table in the centre of the room. It drips blood.
