Double Definition

Two families. One night. The same three words, and two different meanings.

November on the Norfolk Broads: the reed-cutting has begun on Callow Fen, the bonfire is built on the staithe, and Dr Constance Larwood, former dictionary editor and the crossword setter Bittern, is learning the local words for water.

The Fiskes and the Seagos have cut reed on either side of the same dyke for a hundred years and not spoken for twenty, ever since the night a young man died there and a Seago boy went to prison for it. Now the boy is home, and on Bonfire Night Royce Fiske accuses him in front of the whole village.

The next night, in a hard frost and a high flood, Royce goes out alone in his old reed punt. In the morning the Seago boy finds him.

Everybody has a version. The Fiskes have one, the Seagos have another, and they have been telling them in two kitchens for twenty years. Constance notices that both versions quote the same three words, and that nobody has ever asked what they meant.

With a boatyard owner who does her crosswords in pen and has, for once, something to hide, a detective sergeant who keeps catching herself enjoying a clue, a quizmaster whose memory is starting to slip, and a tortoise who walks away from people he does not like (very slowly, and with winter coming on), Constance must read a twenty-year-old story the way only a setter would.

Double Definition is the fourth Wrayham Staithe Mystery: a warm, witty, fairly clued British cosy with a word-loving sleuth, a slow-burn romance, a very old tortoise and absolutely no gore.

A traditional cosy mystery: no gore, no on-page violence, no explicit content.