Debbie Young on her latest cozy mystery Murder Lost and Found 📚

Debbie Young on her latest cozy mystery Murder Lost and Found 📚

“Murder Lost and Found”, the seventh in my Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery series, is very special one for me, because it marks the completion of the original cycle of seven stories that I’d planned to write. The seven books run the course of a village year from one summer to the next. “Murder Lost and Found” takes place in high summer, just after the village school in the Cotswold village of Wendlebury Barrow has broken up for the summer holidays.

The inspiration for this story came from when I used to work in a school office beside the school’s lost property cupboard. Children would chuck all sorts of things in there in passing, and the cupboard was always such a mess that I used to joke that there could be a dead body underneath all the junk, and no-one would ever know.

In “Murder Lost and Found”, I gave this experience a little twist by allowing Sophie, when visiting her best friend Ella who works at the village school, to find a dead body in the school’s lost property cupboard – but then it promptly disappears. So she faces a double challenge – not only to find the murderer, but to locate the body too, saving the school’s reputation as well as finding justice for the victim.

As ever, there is plenty of fun in and around the bookshop where Sophie works for her boyfriend Hector. Comic relief comes from series regulars such as teenage tearaway Tommy, wily old Billy, and village shopkeeper Carol, fount of all village gossip. I always introduce new characters to each Sophie Sayers story, and in “Murder Lost and Found” I mischievously had Hector employ a pretty young intern without first consulting Sophie – guaranteed to put their growing romantic relationship to the test!

Although I was glad to complete my planned cycle of seven books, I’m delighted to tell you that the series isn’t going to end here. By popular demand, I’ll be writing a new Sophie Sayers adventure every year, starting with book 8, “Murder in the Highlands”, to be published by Boldwood Books in all formats on 15^th March.

I hope you’ll have as much fun reading these funny, gentle, feel-good stories as I have had writing them! Now back to my writing desk to press on with Sophie Sayers’ ninth adventure…

Start reading Murder Lost and Found here: 🇬🇧 https://amzn.to/3Qlb1dZ 🇺🇸 https://amzn.to/3X1YNJo