Spence In Petal Park

Can a case be solved in just three days?

Roger Parnell is a rich, good-looking young man, living in the plushiest suburb of a South Coast resort.

When he is found dead in his driveway three days before Christmas, Detective Superintendent Spence immediately gets to work.

Spence believes in method, groundwork, and a proper filing system. In a mobile police unit near the scene of the crime, the investigation is soon under way.

And there's plenty to investigate.

Parnell's life-style included sharp business practices, an unhealthy interest in the girls at the expensive school behind his house, blackmail and seduction.

Interviewing Parnell's neighbours, associates and lovers, Spence soon concludes that plenty of people had cause to hate him.

But which of the apparently sensible, ordinary people behind the privet hedges of exclusive Petal Park actually killed him?

Spence in Petal Park weaves the stories of the people in Parnell's life into a complex web of cause and effect, which Spence's careful work finally unravels — just before Christmas.

Michael Allen was born in Peterborough in 1939 and was educated at Oundle and Queens' College, Cambridge. Between leaving school and going to Cambridge, he worked for six months on the staff of the New York Herald Tribune in New York. He now works as an Area Administrator at the University of Bath, and lives with his wife and two children at Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire.