Winifred Smy Mystery

When a well-dressed man is found brutally murdered in a Suffolk village train station, the police - certain that they 'have their man' - move confidently to arrest his murderer. But a shrewd and fiercely independent local woman, Winifred Smy, isn't convinced; as further fatalities follow, she doggedly pursues the trail of clues that leads to the real killer. Killing Time in Kenton is the first in a series of novellas. The author, Michael Heath, creates a compelling story that introduces the reader to the intriguing Winifred Smy. Defiant and with a mysterious past, she pursues her prey with a steely tenacity and sits at the centre of a cadre of convincingly drawn characters: the recently arrived inspector, Herbert Tranmer, an amoral news reporter, Nigel Manners, and a cast of Suffolk villagers whose rich, authentic dialect bring the fast-paced story to life.

The murderous fingers of Suffolk's witchfinders stretch still across the centuries. How can the evil accusation of a woman as a witch in 1647 unleash a series of events culminating in the unlawful death of an Ipswich magician's assistant in 1913? When two of the most notorious 17th-century witchfinders, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, visit the remote Suffolk village of Kenton, their actions create a legacy that sees a man wrongly imprisoned for murder over 200 years later. In the second of his Winifred Smy mysteries, Michael Heath reintroduces the eponymous amateur sleuth who finds herself gradually entangled in murders old and new. Drawing on acquaintances first met in the previous novella, 'Killing Time in Kenton', a fast-moving narrative unfolds that ricochets between two parallel centuries until Miss Smy finally unmasks the real killer.