I write mysteries that travel England’s canal network, towns and villages — stories where, while the settings are gentle, the characters are complicated, and the “why?” of what happened can be as important as the “who?”

Former police constable Lucy Harford didn’t plan on solving murders. She planned on painting watercolours, drinking tea, and letting the canal carry her somewhere quieter than the life she’d left behind. Her narrowboat The Curious Cat was supposed to be a fresh start — and it is, just not the peaceful kind. Lucy has an artist’s eye for detail and a detective’s instinct for the things people would rather keep hidden. In the villages and market towns along England’s waterways, there’s always plenty of both.

She’s accompanied by Sir Meows-a-Lot, a formerly stray ginger cat who adopted Lucy and has since made himself indispensable — turning up at inconvenient moments, charming people who’d rather not be charmed, and occasionally drawing attention to things that matter more than anyone realises.

Together with her friend Emma, a journalist whose curiosity is at least as dangerous as Lucy’s, they navigate communities where the prettiest facades often hide the most human messes — not simple villainy, but the complicated tangle of loyalty, resentment, grief, and love that makes people do desperate things.

These are mysteries for readers who want the satisfaction of a fair puzzle and the deeper satisfaction of spending time with people who feel real. The settings are the kind of place you can almost smell — canal water and wood-smoke, damp stone and autumn leaves, spring flowers and sunshine. The crimes are solved through observation and intelligence, not violence. And the communities Lucy passes through are warm, complicated places where murder reveals what was always lying just beneath the surface.

If you enjoy writers like Louise Penny, Elly Griffiths, or Ann Cleeves — authors who honour the traditions of mystery fiction while giving their characters room to breathe and their stories room to mean something — you may feel at home here.

To find out more about the series and the individual books, please click on “Books” in the side menu or the button/book image above.

About the stories

What kind of mysteries are these? These are mysteries rooted in the English cozy tradition — amateur detective, close-knit community, clever detection over graphic violence — but with more psychological depth and emotional weight than the label sometimes suggests. The puzzle matters, and so do the people caught up in it.

Why narrowboats? The canal network gives Lucy something rare: she arrives in each community as an outsider with a reason to stay. Her narrowboat life places her close enough to see what’s happening but never quite belonging — and that perspective is what makes her dangerous to people with secrets. It also means each book explores a different place, a different community, and a different set of lives disrupted by crime.

Are the places real? The villages and towns are fictional, but they’re inspired by real experience. I’ve spent many years living and working in villages as well as in some more unusual settings. I believe I know how these communities work — the warmth, the politics, the things that go unsaid.

What makes these mysteries different? My background means I’ve spent decades sitting with people during the most difficult moments of their lives. That experience shapes how I write about crime — not as a puzzle to be solved and forgotten, but as something that reveals who people really are when ordinary life fractures. The mysteries are fair, the solutions are satisfying, and the people you meet along the way will, I hope, stay with you after you’ve closed the book.

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