Working on The Drowned Parish

I wanted to share a quick update on the next Clara Hart mystery, The Drowned Parish.

I’m deep into the book now, and this one has become one of the most atmospheric stories I’ve written in Clara’s world. The setting is a Somerset village called Hartwell, already living in the shadow of disappearance. The valley is being cleared for a new reservoir. Homes are being emptied. Families are leaving. Even the churchyard is being disturbed before the water comes.

That image has stayed with me from the beginning: a village being taken apart piece by piece, while everyone tries to keep certain parts of the past exactly where they were.

Of course, Clara Hart is not the sort of person who accepts a tidy explanation simply because it has been written down in an official hand.

I do not want to say too much about the mystery itself. Part of the pleasure of these books is following the clues with Clara, watching the small details gather weight, and seeing how paper, memory, and silence begin to contradict one another. But I can say this much: The Drowned Parish is a story about a place running out of time. Once the valley is flooded, what remains will be whatever people have managed to preserve, conceal, or rename.

That gives this book a different kind of tension. It is quiet, but it is urgent. Records can be packed away. Witnesses can leave. Graves can be moved. And when a village disappears, its version of the truth can become dangerously easy to control.

That is where Clara belongs.

One of the things I’m enjoying most is seeing how she continues to grow as an investigator. She is still sharp, stubborn, observant, and deeply suspicious of convenient language. But each case teaches her something new. In The Drowned Parish, she faces a community under strain, which changes the nature of the mystery. This is not only about finding what happened. It is about understanding why people chose silence, how long they lived with it, and what it cost the ones who were written out of the story.

I’m excited about this book because it feels like a natural next step for the series. If Murder at Ashgrove Hall introduced Clara and The Coroner’s Inquest widened the world around her, The Drowned Parish takes her into a place where the past is literally about to vanish beneath the surface.

There is still work ahead. I’m revising, tightening, sharpening scenes, and making sure every clue earns its place. That part of the process is slow, but it is also where the book becomes what it is meant to be.

I am genuinely looking forward to getting this one into readers’ hands.

A village marked for drowning.

A churchyard that refuses to stay orderly.

A truth people have spent years trying to keep dry.

More soon.

-Allen

The Coroner's Inquest — Now Available

The truth is in the record. Unless someone removes it first.

Two months after Ashgrove, Clara Hart has taken a room in a boarding house in Thornfield — suitcase packed since December, the careful discipline of not looking back.

Then the summons arrives.

The death at Ashgrove Hall is to be examined in open court. Clara travels to Broughton expecting an accounting. What she finds is a county that knows how to make truth behave — a clerk dead three nights before the inquest opens, the records office sealed, originals removed from official files, and witnesses who take the stand with rehearsed corrections.

Clara still has her carbon copies. Six sets, made with a nurse's exactness. But paper can be removed and replaced — and so can the people who insist on reading it aloud.

The Coroner's Inquest is the second book in the Clara Hart Mystery Series — for readers who love Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, and mysteries where the truth hides in the official record.

New to the series? Start with Murder at Ashgrove Hall — CLICK HERE

Already read it? Pick up The Coroner's Inquest — CLICK HERE

If you've read either book, a short review on Amazon helps new readers find the series. A sentence or two is enough.

— Allen