the marlow murder club by robert thorogood

But then the murderer strikes again, killing a seemingly unrelated taxi driver.

Already unconvinced of the local police’s competency, she decides to take matters into her own hands when it comes to getting to the bottom of her friend’s death. While Tanika has to accept that Judith definitely wasn’t just imagining things, she does warn the older woman against imperiling herself by looking into the matter further. Determined to find out more, Judith heads over to Stefan’s herself, fighting her way into the wildest corners of his river-facing garden to find the worst sort of proof: his corpse with a bullet hole directly in the center of his forehead.

His boss, Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik, gives Judith a courtesy ring the next morning that leaves them both dissatisfied, as the detective is sure that there’s a reasonable explanation for what Judith heard. The trouble is, the constable sent over to investigate finds nothing amiss at Stefan’s. If anyone had been out on the river at that precise moment and had had occasion to look up at Judith’s mansion, they’d have seen a very short and comfortably plump woman in her late seventies with wild gray hair standing entirely naked in her bay window, a cape over her shoulders as if she were some kind of a superhero. Unable to breach the reinforcing wall Stefan had placed between his property and the eroding river, Judith hurries home to ring the police, then watches anxiously from her window:

It’s on one of these pleasant jaunts that she hears a shout and a shot ring out from the garden of her neighbor across the river, Stefan Dunwoody. For physical exercise, she likes to slip nude into the River Thames, accessible via the boathouse at the end of her garden, for an invigorating, semi-private swim. Setting crosswords for national newspapers keeps her mind occupied. Judith Potts is a bit of an eccentric, living happily alone in the Marlow mansion she inherited from her late Great Aunt Betty, along with a portfolio of investments that keep her well off.

The marlow murder club by robert thorogood