Deadly Secrets

You just can’t keep a good woman down… 

Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis once again finds herself up to her neck in dead bodies and suspects.

Not only that, but feisty Kate believes that her own number is up when she finds herself staring at the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun on a sodden stretch of Somerset marshland.

She is on the trail of villain Lenny Stallard who has just broken out of the prison where he was serving time for the murder of the elderly wife of Colonel Stephen Slater during a robbery at their country residence near Bridgwater.

Revenge appears to be the motive and for DS Lewis’s superiors it is a cut-and-dried case as the corpses of trial witnesses begins to mount up. 

But it’s all a bit too convenient for a smart cop like DS Lewis who, despite being taken off the case and given a bit of mentoring of a trainee to do instead, is determined to continue. 

Besides, it’s personal after her hubby and crime-solving partner is attacked – twice – by the number one suspect.

How much does a muck-raking local journalist know that might help DS Lewis get to really what is going on? 

And how is it, that the old Colonel was found dead in a muddy bird-watching spot with perfectly clean shoes?

After all the usual – and not so usual – suspects are systematically eliminated, DS Lewis finally stumbles on the truth. 

But the twists are not over yet…

Deadly Secrets is a chilling crime thriller filled with mystery and deception.

'Extremely well-written and passionately described crime-scenes' - Mid Somerset Series 

'Hodges uses the experience of 30-plus years in the job as an anvil of solid fact to beat out pacey tales of "canteen culture" cops' - Cheddar Valley News 

David Hodges is a prolific crime writer and former essayist, as well as a retired Thames Valley Police superintendent with over 30 years’ experience to his name. He has a particular fascination for the countryside and this is illustrated in his earlier novels, Firetrap, Requiem, Strawfoot and Sandman , which feature feisty woman detective, Kate Lewis, and her chilling murder inquiries on the mist-shrouded marshlands of the Somerset Levels.