ACCLAIMED Merseyside crime fiction author and lawyer Martin Edwards will see his 14th novel published this month.
Mace & Jones’s head of employment will return to bookshops with The Serpent Pool, right, which is the fourth in his series of Cumbria-based whodunits.
The books follow the fortunes of DCI Hannah Scarlett and Oxford historian Daniel Kind.
Mr Edwards said: “The aim with The Serpent Pool was to delve deeper into the creeping tensions bubbling beneath the surface of the Lakes and certain personalities.”
Mr Edwards’s latest book draws heavily on the opium-inspired writing of Manchester-born author and one time Westmorland Gazette editor, Thomas De Quincey. Kind is researching the writer, whose essays included the influential On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts.
Meanwhile, Scarlett is trying to get to bottom of the death of Emily Friend’s drowning in the Serpent’s Pool.
Reviewers have hailed the latest Lakes novel as the “darkest” of the series, but also the “most rewarding”.
THE Serpent Pool is available from publishers Allison & Busby, priced £19.99.
